Rabbit Heart
by Madam Sakamoto
Summary: When he'd heard the words "new recruit", he'd been expecting any number of things, but this shy young woman with the nervous smile was not one of them. She looked, for lack of a better word, lost amid the swarm of superheroes and the labyrinth of slick chrome and shining glass. And he decided he should help change that.
1. Rabbit Hearted Girl

_First attempt at writing something long and involved with the Avengers... Wish me luck._

* * *

Clint Barton tapped his foot idly in time with the changing number on the elevator's screen, watching them slip slowly lower as he descended into the depths of S.H.E.I.L.D's new headquarters. He would have laughed about the fact that Fury's current office was subterranean if he hadn't known that the director would rip him a new one if he pointed out what a blunder that was, when you took into account what had happened to the last hideout they'd had.

But that wasn't his problem, and it certainly wasn't why he was here, so he put the snide remarks to the side and decided to use them later on someone who would appreciate them more.

Like Tony.

The idea cheered him enough to cause a faint smile to slide onto his lips just as the doors slid softly open and he was greeted by the dramatic lighting in the hall to Fury's office. He'd complained, mostly to Natasha; that the lights should be red instead of blue, to optimize one's vision in the low-lighting space. But, he supposed, Fury might want an assailant to be slightly blinded if they were trying to sneak up on him from the brightly-lit elevator.

Again, not why he was here.

He moved easily down the corridor and waited for the doors to open again after he'd scanned his fingerprints and tapped in his personal access code. They did so, with a pneumatic hiss that sounded like a score of disapproving snakes, and he was standing in the threshold of Fury's office, looking at the back of the director's head as he consulted a screen higher up the wall.

"Thank you for coming, Barton," Fury greeted in his usual tone, "I have a mission for you."

Clint was instantly at attention, taking two long strides deeper into the office and stopping when he saw that Fury wasn't alone in the dimly-lit space. There was someone sitting in a chair in front of his desk, head bent as though consulting something in their lap. Casually, slowly, Clint moved until he could see their face, and blinked repeatedly when he realized they weren't conscious. "Sir?" He prompted Fury, returning his attention to the other man.

Fury swiveled his chair back around and glanced between the visitor and his agent. "Do you think you could deliver her to the Avenger's tower by tomorrow afternoon?"

Voiced like a question but not meant as one. So like his director. "Yes, sir."

"Good. I believe you two are already acquainted, aren't you?" He didn't wait for a response, already knowing it to be true. "Keep an eye on her there, and make sure she doesn't get into any trouble."

Clint blinked, shifting his gaze back to the girl in the chair, taking in her pale face and slack features. "Sir, I'm sure you're already aware of how… Difficult having here there might be."

"Why do you think I brought her here, agent?" Fury's eye gleamed in the cold light of his office, the tiniest hint of a smirk lingering on his face. "But I'm sure you'll be more than capable of keeping an eye on her."

Clint inclined his head, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. She was, in all honesty, the last person he wanted running around the Avenger's Tower. "More than capable, sir. Of course."

* * *

The Tower, which had gone through entirely too many different renovations in Tony's opinion, now housed the motley crew of super-powered freaks that had been tagged _The Avengers_ by someone who clearly had a sense of humor. Tony would have guessed Fury, but the man smiled even less than Coulson had, and that was a feat many would find nigh-on impossible.

But their name wasn't the point. The point was he no longer had a massive monument to his ego that he could wander aimlessly through without being bugged by any of his other comrades. Or memos from Fury, or little hints dropped by Agent Hill, or any number of other distractions that drove him right up the smooth glass walls.

He had to co-habitat, and he hated it. Natasha herself had said he didn't play well with others, so you _think_ someone would have gotten the hint that he needed space, but no. _That_ handy little memo had been lost to the void and Tony had no doubt that it would stay right there until the day the earth ended.

So with no way to evict his teammates, and no real place to outrun the long arm of S.H.E.I.L.D, he was stuck tinkering away in his subterranean workshop and pretending the rest of the world didn't exist. He liked to think people like Steve and Banner might run interference for him if Jarvis and Pepper got told to keep out of it, but there was only so much either of the other men could do in the face of a one-eyed man on a mission.

So when the vibrantly blue little LED lit up on the wall by the door, Tony knew who was coming by the color, and straightened out his features as the elevator _dinged_ in time with the seconds it took for his impending doom to draw ever closer. Not that Tony would have ever personally considered Steve to be doom of any kind, but when he came down in the middle of the day, unprompted by either Pepper –who was out of town-, or Tony's elaborate hours without contact –the clock on the wall told him he'd only been down here four hours today; a drop in the ocean-, Tony started to worry.

He decided he was probably entitled to that reaction, considering how stiff Steve's shoulders looked as the chrome doors slid open and he stepped out into the mechanical chaos of the workshop. "Tony, you busy?"

He had to bite back a retort that would likely have gotten him sneered at if the visitor had been Rhodey, and instead shrugged. "Who's asking?"

Steve's almost-smile was a dead giveaway, but Tony let him reply just so he could hear the other man say it. "Fury is looking for you."

"Now what could the big man possibly need me for?" Tony had swiveled back around to face his workbench, trying to remember where he'd been before the elevator chime had acted like a proximity alert. A light bulb went off somewhere in the back of his head. He should get one of those, just because.

"He's been trying to get you all… afternoon." Tony could _hear_ Steve's eyes shift over to look at the clock before he finished that sentence. "He says there's someone coming in about ten minutes, and he wants you to be there when they arrive."

Tony swiveled back around slowly, eyebrows near his hairline as he considered the blond. "He wants me at a meet-and-greet? And who is he even bringing in here, anyway?"

Steve's expression was hard to read, even for a guy who could barely contain the simplest emotion, but Tony would have labeled it as _mildly amused_, if he'd been pressed to do so. "He said something about a new recruit."

Tony was on his feet and halfway to the door before Steve even realized he'd moved, and as the mechanic tossed the rag he'd had over one shoulder into the mess off to his left, he felt his lips curl upwards. "Well why keep him waiting, then?"

* * *

When he'd heard the words "_new recruit_", he'd been expecting any number of things, but this shy young woman with the nervous smile was not one of them.

They'd all sort of assembled in one area, waiting for the elevator to stop chiming mischievously and actually deliver its cargo out onto their floor, and Tony found himself fidgeting before the doors slid softly open and the girl stepped out. She looked, for lack of a better word, _lost_ amid the swarm of superheroes and the labyrinth of slick chrome and shining glass. She was all around average, as far as Tony could tell, and although her clothes were a step on the formal side, there wasn't anything to indicate an occupation in either them, or the way she carried herself. She was clinging to her small roller suitcase and purse handle like they were her only lifeline, and Tony would have laughed if he hadn't known Steve would clip him for it.

Clint was a careful three steps behind her, a nondescript black suitcase in one hand, and he looked positively gleeful in his repressed emotions sort of way. He was watching her closely, eyes trained onto the back of her blond and brown head, and the corners of his mouth kept twitching upwards as they stood just outside the elevator and waited for something.

Fury, who was evidently the thing they were waiting for, swept past moments later and nodded to the collection of comrades spread around the room. "Barton, can you show Miss Liddell to her room, please?" Clint stepped around her carefully, giving her a tiny, encouraging smile before he led her off down the hall and around a corner. As soon as they were out of earshot, Fury returned his attention to the rest of the group. "Miss Liddell will be staying with us for a while, and I'd appreciate it if you all tried to behave yourselves while she's here." He looked pointedly at Tony before he let his one good eye roam over the rest of them threateningly and turned on his heel to leave.

"Question," Tony spoke up before the hem of the long black leather coat managed to disappear from view entirely, "what's she doing here?"

"She is here," Fury's tone bordered on pained, "because I asked her to be here."

It was an utterly unsatisfactory answer, and they all knew it. Tony decided not to pry, though, and rolled his eyes as the elevator encased their director in its metallic grasp once more. As soon as the doors had slipped closed he turned his attention to Natasha, who was gazing absently at the corner Clint and the girl had disappeared around. "Who is she?"

Keen eyes glanced his way before the redhead let out a sigh and folded her arms. "I don't actually know. The only information I have is exactly what Fury just told you."

Tony arched an eyebrow, ready to call her out, but Banner beat him to it, voice soft but still loud enough to reach clear across the room. "She wouldn't happen to be Harry Liddell's daughter, would she?"

Natasha looked a tiny bit surprised, but nodded once, curtly, and managed a faint question. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess." Bruce said with a faint smile, and Tony wanted nothing more than to demand they explain themselves, because he really hated being out of the circle no matter the reasons why.

He was saved from any interrogation attempts, however, by Clint coming back around the corner, utterly unaccompanied, and still looking like he'd managed to snatch a cookie from the jar without anyone noticing. "You seem pretty chipper." Tony pointed out with an arched eyebrow.

"Nice to have a new face around." Clint shrugged the accusation off, and Tony frowned. "Sorry, but you can get kind of boring after a while." He grinned brightly and continued the conversation they'd just been having, looking over at Bruce. "Her names Amy, by the way, and she's Harry's only child."

Tony, ever the mastermind at finding loopholes, squirreled away the name _Harry Liddell_, and made a mental note to ask Jarvis to run a search on him later. One could really never be too careful when it came to new recruits that were here by Fury's express invitation.

* * *

"Harry Liddell, sir." Jarvis's cool tones filled the workshop as the tabletop off to his right lit up with reams of information on the person in question. "And, as per your request, his daughter Amelia."

Tony drifted over to the floating files and started to scroll through them, putting his ability to pick up only the important bits to good use. Things like _experimental science_ and _unusual blood mutation_ popped out at him like flashing red lights, and he frowned into his coffee mug. "Jarvis, can you bring up anything else on the mother?"

"Unfortunately, no, sir. S.H.E.I.L.D has apparently wiped her existence from every database I can access. I was struggling to get you even this much on the father and daughter."

Tony's frown deepened. He didn't like it when big, shady, organizations tied his hands in matters of discovering information. "Is the father still living?" He hadn't seen a date of death in the file that was currently floating in front of him, but that didn't mean anything.

"No, sir. He passed away roughly three months ago. His daughter was brought to the United States shortly after his demise."

The _country of origin: England_ hadn't escaped Tony's critical gaze. "Right…" He muttered softly, scanning a few more details before he collapsed a few of the windows and kept open the official S.H.E.I.L.D field report of one Amelia Liddell. He had ceased to wonder where Jarvis got his information; having long since decided if he needed to know the A.I. would inform him of it.

_Unusual blood mutation_ was about as detailed as S.H.E.I.L.D would get in the vague, highly redacted, report Tony currently had in his possession, but that wasn't really a problem. The living breathing specimen was merely a few floors above him, and if he really couldn't quell his curiosity, he could always just study her himself. Admittedly, that might make Clint angry, since he was listed as _official S.H.E.I.L.D liaison, _but that was a risk Tony was willing to take.

After all, little could stop him when he was driven by science and insatiable curiosity.

* * *

_I love writing for Tony. XD_

_Anywho, hope this beginning got your interest, so hopefully you'll want to keep reading. Reviews are always lovely, and I will update more quickly with incentive from my lovely readers! _^_^

* * *

__The Avengers _and all related characters belong to: _Marvel

Amy Liddell_ belongs to: _Madam Sakamoto

_Story title and all chapter titles are taken from the song_ "Rabbit Heart" _by_: Florence and the Machine


	2. Frozen in the Headlights

_This took longer than I was expecting, but here it is at last._

* * *

Tony decided, when Amy had finally emerged from her room and taken to flitting around the hallways in the middle of the night, that she was sort of cute. In a little sister sort of way, he had to explain to Clint when the archer caught him watching her one afternoon on the playback from the night before. But really. With the way she slipped along dark corridors when she knew everyone else was asleep, and turned basically nocturnal so as to avoid them all during the day, Tony would have been lying if he said that wasn't just a little cute.

She, what was the word, _scurried_. Like a freaking little mouse. Blue eyes peering around corners and always ducking back into the shadows when she heard someone coming. It was like she was afraid of being caught, or something, and even after going over every inch of her file, he couldn't figure out why. There was nothing more extensive than the vague terms they threw out to describe her "_mutation_", and Tony was coming up with nil on his other searches. Whatever was different about her, S.H.E.I.L.D didn't want anyone else hearing about it.

And so it was, without any prodding from anyone, thank you very much, that Tony set out to discover Amy's secret all by his little lone self. Not that he was just going to walk up to her and ask, that would have been the wrong way to go about it, but he did intend to get to know her. Here he was, flexing his P.R. muscle. Pepper would have been proud.

* * *

It started that night, actually on accident, and he came around a corner to see her leaning against one of the counters in the kitchen and waiting for whatever was in the microwave to finish heating. It took him about a second and a half to realize this was a perfect opportunity to introduce himself, so he moved in closer and then spoke up loudly enough to let her know he was there without, hopefully, spooking her completely.

"Whatcha makin?" Not his best line, perhaps, but it was the first thing that popped into his head that didn't sound completely unprofessional.

She jumped, just a little, and turned to look at him, eyes flickering across him before coming back up to look him in the eye. "Just some coffee, Mr. Stark." She had a gentle, lilting accent, not unlike that of the A.I. that lurked in the rafters, and it rolled gently over vowels, turned her '_r_'s into long, gentle sounds. His name sounded so nice when she said it. Sounded so very far from any sort of insult.

"You could have brewed fresh," he gestured to the glitzy machine nestled back in one corner of the large countertop, "Jarvis can do that for you, if you don't know how."

"Oh, no, I didn't want to bother anyone…" She shrugged; a minute hop of her shoulders under the sweater she was wearing. "Besides, I hadn't finished this cup yet. But it only tastes so good when cold."

He drained the last remnants of his own mug, trying to hide his grin behind the rim of it, and moved carefully across her path to put it into the machine, revving it up for another cup. There was something about her, he realized, that made him feel relaxed. Like it was okay that he had a million questions whizzing through his head but couldn't pick just one to ask, she would be here when he figured it out.

The coffee started its thing, and he turned to watch her pull her mug from the clutches of the microwave, blowing across its surface before trying a sip and finding it acceptable. "So where are you from? Fury didn't give us much to go on."

"London, originally," she slipped up onto the counter, legs dangling off the edge and shoulders curved inwards, "but most recently would be Westchester."

Tony blinked. "You didn't have that far to move that far, then?"

She shook her head, taking another long sip of coffee as Tony looked over his shoulder at the machine behind him. It would shut itself off when it knew the mug was full –ah the beauty of weigh-based sensors- but every once in a while it would miscalculate, a fact that still bugged Tony even though he'd deconstructed and reconstructed the appliance four times. "I do sort of miss it, though."

He dragged his mind back to reality and raised an eyebrow. "Are we really such a pain to live with? I noticed you keep avoiding us on purpose." He nodded at her, as if to indicate her very presence in the kitchen at this hour was proof of that.

She smiled; a tiny quirking of her lips. "No, no, it's not that. I'm just not really good with strangers, is all."

"You knew who I was." He pointed out.

"Everyone in New York State knows who you are, Mr. Stark." She said with a slight grin, taking another long drink in order to cover it up. "Director Fury let me read some very edited files on all of you on the way here. Not much more than a name and a face, but it's enough to be getting on with for the moment."

Tony gave himself a tiny gold star for getting her to talk so much in such a short amount of time. It wasn't exactly that she was anti-social on an Olympic level like himself at times, she was just shy. Apparently dark kitchens and coffee could fix that, depending on the person. "So what did my file say about me?"

"Honestly? I didn't read it." She looked embarrassed, staring intently into her mug. "I prefer to get to know people on my own. Reading others views tend to, well, I suppose cloud my own judgment. I prefer to come to my own conclusions about people."

Tony tried to remember how old she was, and why the hell there weren't more people her age saying things like that. "Wow. Okay. Well I'm not going to stop you, or anything, but just for the record I'm not as bad as basically everyone makes me out to be."

She laughed softly, muffled by her mug, and smiled over at him. "Don't worry, Mr. Stark, I don't think you're bad in the slightest."

Tony could have sword his arc reactor started to glow more brightly.

"I did read quite a bit about that, however," she nodded shyly at said reactor, "my father was interested in the technology before he died, and I must admit I was rather curious about it myself." She shrugged. "I'm not as brilliant as my father was, but I applaud you for it. For using it the way you do."

"Sorry, pause for a second; do you say things like that to everyone? Because you must be really popular if you do. Just saying." Tony knew he should have been keeping his mouth shut, Pepper had lectured him at length on the amount of things he said when he should keep quiet, but the lessons had never really stuck. There was no little checking station that dinged red or green lights when thoughts went from his brain to his mouth. There was no filter. Maybe he should look into making one, just to wind people up.

She blinked in the dim light and shook her head slightly. "Things like what, Mr. Stark?"

"You really didn't notice the difference? Good God." He was saved trying to explain her apparent complex about complimenting people by the coffee maker chiming happily just behind him, and he promptly turned to drown his sorrows in the steaming liquid. She was still staring at him when he turned back around, and he really wished she wouldn't. There were some things better left to the dark, and this was evidently one of them. "Sorry, Amy, forget I said anything. And call me Tony; by the way, Mr. Stark sounds so stuffy and formal."

She smiled at him, real and genuine and bright, and slipped off the counter in order to rinse out her mug. "Well then. Goodnight, Tony."

He grinned at her over the rim of his mug as she moved back off towards her room, and tried to resist the urge to ask her if he could record her voice and use it for his next A.I. Jarvis would probably have been insulted, if he asked out in the open like this. He decided the whole thing had earned him another tiny gold star, so he mentally stuck it into place before making his way back to the workshop and trying to remember what he'd been working on before he ventured out to meet her.

* * *

It took Amy another day to fully make it out into the light, but when she did it was casually, in the background, and the first day she ever drifted into the kitchen to get breakfast with Clint, which was a challenge since the archer would snitch food from your plate without batting an eye, Tony seemed to be the only one who noticed before Thor appeared in the elevator and deemed it necessary to rumble out a request.

"Fury has made me aware that there is a new comrade amongst us, I would very much like to meet this person."

Tony had wanted to laugh, because of all the people to actually say _we should meet_ to poor, shy, little Amy, it was _Thor_. The man with more daddy issues that Tony himself, and probably a complex where his brother was concerned, and a voice that filled any building without trouble. He was loud, and rough, and really there was no way she would ever actually agree to it.

Except that she did.

Tony, in all his infinite maturity, gave Thor a tiny star of his own.

He was missing the cape that day, thankfully for Amy's sanity, and she greeted him with a small smile and an absolutely perfect curtsy, which seemed to catch Thor off guard, because apparently she wasn't what he'd been expecting. Clint hovered in the background as though he would clean Thor's clock if he made a move the agent found too shifty, and Tony would have been lying if he said he wouldn't _love_ to see that.

"You are Amelia, then?" Thor had gotten over the surprise of a girl curtsying to him while wearing pants, and was in the stage of looking her over with evident interest. "I will admit I was not expecting so young of a Midgardian to be included in our team." He gave her that wide, mildly blinding smile of his. "Not that I find anything wrong with the idea, however, one of Asgard's own protectors is a lady, and after working with Agent Romanoff as well, I can appreciate a woman being a part of the team."

Amy gave him a shy smile, shrugging in a way that was almost signature to her alone. "I'm not really part of the team, though," she admitted softly, "I'm not like the rest of you. I'm not a hero."

Thor seemed to melt on the spot, and Tony decided that one day he would make a hell of a dad. "There may be more than one kid of hero, Amelia," he spoke softly, just for her, "and I am sure that one day you will be in a league of your own."

Amy did a bit of melting herself, at that, and Tony honestly wished he could come up with things like that on the spot. He could charm his entire Board of Directors and Pepper into going along with every little whim that came into his head. Which, upon reflection, would be a nightmare. Tony Stark was many things, but he needed people to point him in the right direction every once in a while, or he would certainly get lost. Also in line with the whole honesty thing was that Tony couldn't refuse to give Thor another tiny star. Had to give the man credit for that particular stunt.

And speaking of stunts, it was like Thor had knocked down some awkward, invisible glass wall between Amy and the Avengers, because suddenly Banner was shuffling into the room and introducing himself, and although Amy dodged every hand aimed her way to shake, she was perfectly polite to her new roommates. After Thor got the ball rolling, the rest of them all stepped up to bat, and Tony felt a tiny surge of pride at that. Villains could run amok in the streets of New York, and Fury could have a panic attack over one thing or another, but at the end of the day, this was them. An awkward bunch of individuals that needed someone else to make the first move in social settings before the rest of them were ready to follow.

And Thor, prince of Asgard and hammer-wielding hero of New York, was the one who went and shattered that glass wall all to bits with nothing more than a few choice words.

Tony conceded defeat and gave him a third gold star.

* * *

_As much as I love writing for Tony, I love writing for Thor as well. X3_

_I really hate it when people write him as this sort of old-fashioned oaf, when that's not really who he is, and he often gets tagged as the one to mock because he doesn't get how the world down here works, but I disapprove of that treatment of him. He may not get many Midgardian customs, but he does get how people think and operate, and to label him a oafish easily-offended/made-fun-of character does not do the man justice. And that doesn't mean Clint or Tony shouldn't poke fun at him here or there, but he doesn't need to be made a clown for the dynamic to work.  
_

_Now, I may just be missing all the fics where he's depicted as sweet and understanding and if that is the case, I beg of you to enlighten me on the subject.  
I really want to be able to read something without rolling my eyes and despairing at the lack of well-written Thor-centric scenes._

_Okay. Ranting over now._

_All reviewers will be rewarded with a little gold star sticker from Tony Stark himself.  
_


	3. The Wrong Pill To Take

_Sorry for the wait!_

* * *

After the initial, awkward greetings were over with, Amy came out of her shell a bit more. She would appear at meal times, usually sitting next to Clint, unless someone had beaten her to it, in which case she sat next to Tony which he pretended didn't make him happy. And she always poked her head out of her room when she heard the red alert start sounding, usually with a worried expression like maybe this time they were in over their heads and she should really try to help them, despite not being a hero. And whenever they suited up and made for the site of the catastrophe, she waved them away as they dashed off to save the day.

She still kept to herself, Tony had noticed without really trying, but the point was that now she _did_ come out of her room at a reasonable hour of the day and interact with the rest of them. She'd stopped looking so scared, and would actually answer questions when they were directed her way, or take part in a conversation when prompted to do so. She wasn't a hermit anymore, and that had been Tony's plan from the beginning. The idea that he had succeeded, however insignificantly in the bigger, grander scheme of things, made him proud. Proud enough, in fact, to call Pepper and brag. In a totally un-conceited sort of way, of course.

"You ran background checks on a teenage girl?" Pepper was, understandably, unimpressed with his initial conduct.

"Only because Fury wouldn't tell us squat, and she was unavailable for further questioning. And she's a young adult, not a teen. And yes, I know how that all sounds and that is not the point."

"Then what is the point, Tony, besides your sudden surge in stalker-like tendencies?"

Tony made a face at her on his end of the phone, and he swore she could tell, because she rewarded him with a faint sigh. "The point is, Miss Potts, that I managed to crack a recluse out of her shell. I think that should earn me points in some category." He was pouting, he knew, but he couldn't help it. He'd been so thrilled when Amy had talked to him that he'd never really thought about how Pepper might see his actions.

"Tony, not everyone goes around awarding people little prizes for doing good works."

"They should." He interjected.

"Yes, you're right, but did it ever occur to you that maybe Amy is hiding things for a reason? If Fury brought her there it must be for a reason, and if they don't want you to know said reason, then it follows that Amy would try to stay away from all of you in order to avoid awkward questions."

"But she hasn't avoided us since I talked to her!" Tony replied. "And with Clint watching our every move, I doubt any of us could ask a question she was uncomfortable with without getting slugged by Legolas."

"Why is he so protective of her, anyway?" Pepper suddenly changed topics on him; something he was pleased to say was partly due to his influence upon her thought processes.

"He was the agent assigned to her case when they first found her or something like that. They have history." He tried not to think about that too much, and was so glad to know that his workshop was secure and no one could hear him at the moment.

Pepper made a soft, thoughtful sound at the back of her throat and kept quiet for a moment or two. Finally, she added, "Tony, I don't think you should push too hard with this."

"I had no intention of pushing hard at all. Doesn't mean I won't nudge or gently prod, but you have my word that I won't push hard."

"Tony…" It was a warning, and he knew it.

"Pep, you know I can't promise I won't push at all. Completely incapable of saying that and sticking to it." He hoped his tone was apologetic enough that she could tell he was sorry about it. In all honesty he sort of wished he could promise her that and stick to it, but he knew that was out of the question. Pushing had gotten him into trouble before, but it had also gotten him out of it as well.

"Alright, as long as you promise not to push too hard."

"I promise."

He had, with every honest fiber of his being, meant to keep that promise. And if questioned he would argue that what happened next was totally not his fault. _She_ had come to see _him_ in the workshop, he hadn't dragged her down there by force, and _she_ had taken the initiative to poke about the place. He hadn't had a thing to do with what happened next, and he was willing to produce any amount of evidence necessary to prove that point.

* * *

The elevator had dinged in time with the number of floors it was descending in order to appear in his workshop, and he'd thrown a glance towards the control board to see which little lights had brightened in order to tell him who was on their way down. When they all remained dark, including the dark gray one that indicated Fury himself, Tony had frowned at them all in disapproval and stopped what he was doing.

"Jarvis?"

The A.I. needed no further instruction, and there was only a brief pause before the calm voice filled the workshop. "Miss Liddell is on her way down to see you, sir."

Tony decided he'd have to install a new little light once he figured out which one to give her, and returned to the project at hand. "She alone?" He tried his best to keep his tone casual, but there was clearly no fooling his ingenious, invisible butler.

"Yes, sir, otherwise my facial recognition software would have alerted you to the other visitor's presence." He sounded almost a little insulted, as though Tony had been questioning his ability to recognize any of his other teammates.

"Of course you would have. What was I thinking?" As the last sentence slipped past his lips, the elevator doors dinged open, and Amy slipped into the workshop.

"I'm afraid I don't know, Tony." She replied as he swiveled round to look at her, her lips quirking up just a touch at the corners. "You'll just have to remember your train of thought on your own."

He grinned, somehow thrilled that she'd felt comfortable enough to take part in the conversation. "I was talking to Jarvis; actually, he was trying to sass me."

"I take offense at that, sir." Jarvis replied promptly, but Tony ignored him in favor of motioning Amy further into the chaotic space.

"Don't be shy. Nothing in here bites. Except for me, but I promise to behave."

She giggled softly and took a few hesitant steps further into the room, blue eyes glancing about at the clutter that surrounded her. "I hope you don't mind my coming down without warning… I was just curious."

Tony swiveled back towards his current project in order to hide his massive grin. "Feel free to come down whenever, I don't mind. Jarvis gives me a heads-up to whoever is headed my way, so I don't scar anyone for life with some newfangled contraption." He distinctly heard her giggled at the word _newfangled_, and committed the reaction to memory for future reference. "So what prompted this visit? Clint get too clingy for you?"

There was a smile in her voice, he could hear it. "Nothing like that. I genuinely was just curious about what you did down here. Clint seems to think it's your version of an evil liar."

"He's right, you know."

She laughed. "I thought as much." Her footsteps started to grow closer until she was standing next to him, hands clasped behind her back and visibly trying to stay a certain distance away from him. "Do you mind my asking what you're working on?"

Tony didn't mind in the least, and quickly launched into a detailed explanation about his current, newfangled, contraption, only realizing halfway through a very complicated description of the main mechanism that she might not know half of the terms he was using, despite the fact that she continued to nod and presumably was following along just as quickly as he was talking. "You know," he paused half way through an animated explanation, "if I'm going too fast for you…"

"Oh, no, no," she shook her head with a smile, "no need to try and slow down on my part."

Tony decided then and there that this might be some strange type of love because he'd never felt like this before. Not even with Pepper, and he knew he loved her. "Okay, so, when this is finished, it'll…" He stopped again as the elevator dinged in protest to his sentence, and he swiveled his chair back around to glare at the blinking blue light that was practically mocking him.

Amy, who had shifted closer while he'd been talking, quickly jumped back out of his way, her heel catching on an errant piece of machinery and sending her toppling backwards into the waiting arms of the lone couch that occupied that side of the room. She started laughing at her act of clumsiness just as the doors opened and Steve emerged into the space with a raised eyebrow at the sight that met him.

Tony was grinning as he looked over at Amy, collapsed as she was against the couch, and Steve moved in only a few short strides to her side, offering her his hand to help her stand back up. She took it without hesitation, still laughing, letting him pull her back onto her feet, but as he added more force and her momentum sent her colliding gently into his chest, her expression changed to one of mild horror as the hand he wasn't holding landed over his heart.

For the span of maybe six seconds she stood there with her eyes unfocused as both Tony and Steve sent her identical, concerned expressions. Finally Steve pulled back far enough to look at her face, a frown marring his own. "Amy?"

She started back into action as though he'd burned her, tugging away and drawing in sharp, shuddering breaths. "Captain, I'm…" She stopped, hands coming up to cover her mouth as her eyes went wide.

"Amy, what's wrong?" Tony prompted, hoping beyond all hopes that Jarvis was currently scanning her to make sure nothing completely untoward had just happened.

"I'm so sorry." She breathed; turning and running full tilt for the elevator before either of them could catch her. As she spun back around, hurriedly jamming her finger against the appropriate button to take her back to safety, Tony could see tears in her eyes.

"What the hell was that all about?" He breathed as the doors closed and Amy disappeared from their sight.

"I'm not sure," Steve replied absently, "but I think we should try to find out."

* * *

Amy was missing from any part of the Tower for the next week, and no amount of prodding from anyone, even Clint, could convince her to come out of her room. It was almost as though she'd vacated the Tower entirely, except that Jarvis could still activate the camera in her room and see her curled up in a corner, still as could be.

Tony had been standing by her door for the better part of an hour, trying to hack his way past the locks and passcodes that were keeping it shut and sealed, when Steve clapped him on the shoulder and told him, gently but firmly, to leave it.

Tony did just that, he walked away and pretend he wasn't dying to know what the massive spike in brain activity Jarvis had recorded meant, or why touching Steve had made her cry. Most girls her age were crying because they _couldn't_ get their hands on Captain America, and in Tony's mind it didn't follow that having Steve Rogers, gentleman extraordinaire, help you stand should result in tears. So he went to brood in his workshop and pretend he wasn't spying on Cap's attempts to sooth whatever ruffled feathers Amy had by talking to her through her door.

"Amy, whatever happened, you don't have to hide. I'm not sure what you think you might have done, but I'm not mad." Steve had, apparently, managed to talk everyone into staying away from the door, because there was a suspicious lack of traffic in that area. "Could you please come out and tell us what happened? Or, if you'd rather not tell the others, you can just tell me. I can keep a secret."

"I know you can." Amy's voice was barely above a whisper, but the response made Steve's face light up with an odd combination of relief and success. "That's… That's sort of the problem, I guess."

"That I can keep a secret? How is that a problem, Amy?"

"Not that." The chuckle that followed was anything but cheerful. "The problem is that I know." There was another pause before the door cracked open and she peered past the frame of the door at him. "Do you promise you won't be mad when I explain?"

Steve nodded, almost a little too eagerly. "I promise."

Amy came the rest of the way out of her room, hands hidden in her pockets and her head bent. "Then I suppose it's about time I explain to you all what I'm doing here."

* * *

_Yes, yes, I'm a horrible person for cutting you off just there. But I like to think of this as a clever plot hook that will have you coming back for more, not a cliff-hanger that will drive you nuts until the next chapter is posted. XD_


	4. From Blue To Red

Steve was sitting on the couch across from Amy, his head bent and eyes still wide from shock, and the girl in question looked like she wanted to throw herself out of a first floor window.

She'd done as promised, come clean to all of them about her… Abilities. But there were still confused faces mixed in among the Avengers, and Tony was perhaps the only one who had traded in confusion for enthusiasm, and looked like a kid on Christmas day who had just spotted a really massive box under the tree with his name on it.

Amy, though, still felt like she should be apologizing to Steve, poor man, and was doing just that as Tony began running through a list of things he wanted to ask her once she'd stopped being all repentant. "It was an accident, Captain, and I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking, otherwise I never would have let you help me up…"

Steve, with a very deep breath taken in through the mouth and released through his nose, shook his head and sat up a little straighter. "Don't worry about it, Amy, its fine." He didn't exactly sound convinced, but his eyes were speaking volumes to the girl across from him and she simply nodded, dipping her head.

"Okay, I have a question," Tony decided the proper amount of time had passed and now he could start in on the questions burning on his tongue, "how the hell did you even manage to read Steve's mind in six seconds flat?"

Amy shook her head slightly, still clearly overwrought by the fact that she had invaded Captain America's privacy without permission, and now had a whole new batch of information swirling through her skull. "It's sort of an instant thing," she mumbled finally, "it's a lot of information to take in, but it goes quickly for all of you."

Tony blinked. "There's no way it took that long because of how complex Cap's thought was, no offence, bro." He shrugged. "Me or Banner, that would make sense for it to take longer, but not Steve."

"No, Tony, you don't understand," Amy looked up then, expression almost desperate for someone to realize just how bad this was, "I didn't just read his mind in the way you think of it. If I feel someone's heartbeat, from any pulse point on their body, I read _all _of their mind. Not just surface thoughts, but everything buried deeper. All their memories, emotions, desires, drives, _everything_." She hid her face behind a curtain of hair, voice barely above a whisper. "And it never goes away, Tony, none of it. I remember everything that I hear in their past life. Everything they felt, and saw, and imagined. All of it."

Tony was about to ask another question when Clint swooped in to save the day and alighted onto the chair arm next to Amy, a hand coming to rest lightly on her back. She didn't flinch away from him like she had all the others, but let him touch her without any reaction. "Amy's what you call a Mutant." Barton's voice was nearly as quiet as Amy's had been. "She's a touch-telepath, but with a certain special something, I guess you could say. Skin-to-skin contact allows surface thoughts to be heard and recorded, but the heartbeat allows her access to any memory, any thought that the person she's touching has had." He looked a little guilty, like maybe he shouldn't be talking about her in so clinical a way. "Part of her… gift is that she remembers everyone she reads. Doesn't matter how long it's been since the initial contact." He sent Steve an apologetic look before Tony piped up.

"When you were working on the case initially, she read you, didn't she?" It followed that the one person Amy hadn't been afraid of had already been added to her internal index of awesome.

"Yeah," Clint admitted with a shrug, "she had permission that time, though, so…" He trailed off, as though talking about it was somehow uncomfortable for the both of them.

"That is _awesome_!" Tony gushed suddenly, his face still glowing from excitement. "Can you imagine all the totally outrageous things you could do if you read me, with all my technical knowledge, or Banner, or _Natasha_?" He looked like he might burst into a full-on rant at any second, and Amy gently interrupted him before that could happen.

"That was the plan, actually." She looked even guiltier than before, if possible, and wasn't looking any of them in the eye.

"What plan might that be, Amelia?" Thor, who had been silently watching up till now, gently pried at the shell Amy usually wore around them. "Did someone ask you to do that? To read certain members of the team?"

"All of you were on the list, actually," she admitted with a shrug, "I told you I'm not a hero." She took a deep breath and then let it out again, eyes closing as she continued in the same soft tone. "I was meant to be a back-up, in case anything happened to one of you. If I read all of you, then I could replicate whatever you'd made already in an attempt to replace you." She chuckled ruefully. "Not that I could ever compare to any of you, but still… I could build another Iron Man, or try to figure out how the Gamma Radiation had created the Hulk, or even hold a proper Asgardian council meeting with Odin… The possibilities were endless as long as this worked." She finally looked back at Steve, expression grim. "But I never intended to spring it on you like this. I was planning to tell you all and try to convince you to let me read you."

"And if we didn't just let you?" Bruce asked gently, eyebrows raised. "If we refused to let someone into our heads, even someone we might trust, what then?"

"Then I suppose Fury would have ordered you to let me. But I didn't want it to come to that. He brought me here for that purpose, but I planned to do everything possible to bring you around to the idea without a direct order. I never wanted to force you into this."

"If this is how it begins," Steve finally ventured, "with you reading us in case of a catastrophe, then how does it end? At what point does Fury think you've had enough and need to be taken away somewhere safe?"

Amy blinked twice, slowly, and pulled herself up a little straighter. "It ends with a green-eyed God of mischief."

Tony stared at her, mouth falling open. "_Loki_? He wants you to read _Loki_?"

"Why?" Steve's voice cut across the chatter that had sprung up amongst the others, eyes still boring into Amy's. "Of all the people we've faced and forced away, why him?"

"Because of all the people you've faced and forced away, he's the only one that came so close to destroying the world. He knows things about the creatures in other dimensions, and although he would never give up that information willingly, if I read him then I'll know it too. We'll be better prepared next time, if there is a next time, and Fury wants that advantage."

"I have that sort of knowledge as well," Thor interjected, "would not reading me be enough?"

Amy smiled at him slightly. "It would be, if that was all I was after. But there are things we need to know that only your brother can tell us, and since he certainly won't be telling us voluntarily…"

The thunder God let out a sigh, his head dipping low before he replied. "So be it, then, I will not fight against you, Amelia. If you wish to read it, my heart is at your disposal."

Amy laughed, a sound that made them all jump with the suddenness of it. "No offence, Thor, but I think I'd rather work my way up to you. It's been a while since I read anyone, and Steve sort of took it out of me…" She threw Tony a look before he could do more than grin, and red was creeping up the back of Steve's neck slowly. "But I appreciate your willingness to help." She finished with a smile.

Thor smiled right back. "You are most welcome, Amelia." He turned a look onto Tony, as though challenging him to disagree with the apparent plan of not putting up a fight.

"Hey, don't look at me; I think it's an awesome idea. I'll finally be able to have someone to play with down in the workshop." And it was only then that Tony realized that Amy's _everything_ did, in fact, mean just that. And that would include all those nightly interviews with _Vanity Fair_. He decided that he would just have to find a way to seal those away, maybe in the mental version of a strongbox or safe, before she went prying into his mind.

Steve stood, offering Amy a hand and a faint smile. "I suppose it's settled, then."

She took his hand and let him help her up from her seat, smiling back just as gently. "I suppose it is."

* * *

_I know it's not as long, but that does not give you the right to throw things, so please refrain from doing so!_

_Okay, so, yeah. Now you know what Amy is and what she does, but if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask. I will answer any questions to the best of my ability!  
_


	5. Gold in the Sunlight

_Cookies to anyone who can spot the references!_

* * *

Tony tried not to stare, he really did, but she was being little sister cute again, and he couldn't ignore the way her nose crinkled when something on her sketch pad went wrong, or how she would steal glimpses of all of them when she thought they weren't looking. And most of them weren't, but Tony was, and if the way Clint kept almost-posing-but-not-quite against the counter was any indicator, he was looking too.

Amy was curled up in a large arm chair on one side of the room, a sketch pad propped against her knees and an assortment of supplies caravanned across the back of the chair. She was drawing furiously, something Tony had never seen her do before, and if the glances she was tossing around the room were anything to go by, they were her impromptu models.

After another agonizing five minutes of watching her scribble away at her paper, he dropped his mug unceremoniously into the sink and moved right over to her, looking over her shoulder at the scene that she'd sketched out onto the blank cream paper.

It was them.

The Thunder God's face as he stood with an arm around Tony's shoulder. The genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist with a signature smirk and arms folded over his arc reactor. The good doctor with his glasses slipping down his nose and the smile lines evident at the corners of his eyes. The archer with his easy attitude and bright smile. The assassin with the sly eyes and small smirk. The all-American nice guy with a soft smile and his gaze trained onto his teammates.

It was perfect. All the little details so vivid that it looked almost like a photograph instead of a sketch. And Tony found himself incapable of keeping praise to himself. "Wow."

Amy jumped, letting out a squeak of surprise as she whipped around to look at him. "Tony!" It was part reprimand, part question.

He continued to stare at the drawing, eyes moving slowly over the delicate details. "Wow." He repeated; ignoring the looks she was giving him over her shoulder. "That's amazing, Amy. I had no idea you could draw."

I couldn't, before…" She turned her gaze back to the sketch, adding depth to a few of the drag lines on the front of Tony's shirt where his arms folded across his chest. "This is thanks to Steve."

"What, has he been giving you lessons, or…?" His voice died in his throat when he realized what she meant. "Or is it because of his memories?" He finished instead.

Amy nodded silently, flipping to another page and starting in on what soon became an eye, darker in color by the amount of shading she put into it. "I try to get it out of my system as quickly as possible, so that it doesn't interfere with anything else I may try to do…" She moved from the left eye onto the right, making the gaze soft. "The same thing happened with Clint, when we first met. I spent nearly a week at the nearest archery range nonstop." She chuckled softly, finishing the set of eyes and starting in on the surrounding features. "If I read you, Tony, I imagine you might not be able to get me out of your workshop for quite some time."

Tony grinned down at her, realizing that the portrait she was working on was his own. "You say that like I'd want you gone." He paused, waiting to see how she'd begin to draw his mouth, and grinned again when her pencil paused before starting in on his smile. "Need me to model?"

She glanced up at him, giving him a slight smile. "Only if you're not busy, Mr. Stark."

"Not in the slightest, Miss Liddell." He plopped down into the seat across from her and posed dramatically. "How do you want me?"

A faint dusting of pink painted itself over her cheeks. "Just, ah, stay like that, looking towards the window."

Tony did as requested, watching her from the corner of his eye as she started sketching again. She worked quickly, glancing from sketch to subject and back again. He managed not to move too much, aware that doing so would disturb her work, and tried not to grin when he spotted Steve slinking closer, curiosity in his blue eyes.

"Amy?" The Captain's voice was gentle, geared not to startle her, and he looked genuinely pleased and not a little proud of what she was doing.

She barely glanced at him before going back to her work, a blush creeping back into her cheeks. "Yes, Captain?"

Steve stood at her shoulder, watching her work with evident fascination. "Did I…?"

"Awesome, isn't it?" Tony asked in way of answer, earning himself a look from the girl sketching him. "Apparently memories aren't quite the only think she picks up when she reads people."

Steve continued to watch her draw, a slightly smug smile tugging at his lips. "Heaven help us when she reads you, then, Tony."

The genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist sputtered with indignation.

* * *

Banner was next on Amy's impromptu reading list, Tony discovered when she suddenly disappeared into her room with a collection of chemicals and test tubes. Tony would look in on her from time to time, Jarvis always sounding exasperated when he complied to the request. She played for a few days and when she finally came back out it was in a puff of smoke. Bruce would share shy smiles with her at meals, and the two of them would be caught whispering in corners quietly over one thing or another.

Tony would have been jealous, in an odd I-want-one sort of way, but only a day or two after she'd resurfaced from her room she appeared in his workshop with a guilty sort of smile.

"If you're going to ask to draw me like one of your French boys, then I'm afraid my answer will disappoint you." Tony said with a wink.

Amy laughed, pink painting her cheeks lightly, and shook her head. "No, Tony, I don't want to draw you like one of my French boys." She sat on the couch that had caught her the last time she'd been down here. "I was wondering if you were ready for a… A reading lesson." She grinned slightly, and Tony returned the gesture with twice as much vigor.

"How do you want me?"

How Amy wanted him was relaxed on the couch, with her sitting next to him. He was trying not to fidget, instead breathing deeply with his eyes closed as she'd instructed, and trying to pack all the little things he didn't want her to know or see into a big black box that he was imagining. There was more being put in there than he had first thought there would be.

"Tony," Amy's tone was gentle and bordering on amused, "just let me know when you're ready."

He took another few steadying breaths before he replied. "Right, okay, quick before anything else slips out." She giggled, and he could feel the heat of her hand radiating against his chest before contact was made and the world went silent.

Tony mentally counted to ten before he heard her inhale sharply and pull away. He opened his eyes to see her blinking repeatedly, blue eyes rimmed with moisture. "Tony, I didn't…" She swallowed hard, shaking her head. "I didn't realize how much it hurt."

Tony gulped, realizing he'd forgotten to put that into his black box. The instillation of his arc reactor, the escape that had followed; the whole miserable fiasco. "Oops."

She'd laughed at that, thankfully, and hid her face in her hands for a moment before she looked back up, his cheesy celebrity grin looking all sorts of wrong on her face. "Can we play?" She tilted her head off towards the mechanical chaos that littered his workbench.

"Yes," Tony replied instantly, sitting up, "we can play to your heart's content."

* * *

Amy had collapsed on the couch, back to Tony and the rest of the world as he continued to tinker on without her. Her breathing had been even for the past several minutes, the girl's mind clearly at ease as she slept. He'd managed to scrounge up a blanket for her that wasn't covered in grease or other highly dubious substances, and it was draped over her as she stayed curled up.

"What are you hoping to find, sir?" Jarvis almost sounded as though he were whispering, as though speaking at a normal volume might wake their guest up.

"I'll let you know when I find it." Tony was going over readings from earlier, paying close attention to her brain activity and the massive spike it had taken when she'd read him. The activity was nothing more than a passing flurry, a few brief seconds of off-the-charts readings before Amy had gone back to being herself. And stayed that way, if her continued soft breathing was any sign.

Except that suddenly her breathing wasn't soft, it was ragged and harsh, and her brain activity had shot up again, catching the inventor's eye. He swung around in his chair and surged to his feet, moving to check on her. Her face was drawn tight, eyebrows knitted together, a soft whimper leaving her lips as she dreamed. Tony dithered on what to so as he perched on the edge of the couch and waited. He wasn't exactly used to these sorts of things.

He didn't have to wait long, however, because only another few seconds passed before she sat straight up, letting out a strangled scream. He caught her in a tight hug instinctively, shushing her gently while she clung to him, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Amy?" He prompted after a moment, his voice no more than a warm breath against her ear.

"Sorry, so sorry," she mumbled into his shoulder, "nightmares. Shoulda mentioned, that happens sometimes after a reading…"

Tony held on just a little tighter, remembering the bad dreams he'd had himself when he'd first gotten back from his stint in the desert. "No worries, Amy." He ran through several different possibilities as he sat there and listened to her pulse slowly return to normal. "Need help getting back to sleep?"

"Yeah," she murmured against his shirt, "I should probably take something."

"Something for what ails you, huh?" He pulled away enough to smile at her. "Something it is, then."

* * *

_I have always loved fics where Steve's drawing abilities are put on display, so I couldn't resist tying that in here. Personally, I think he'd be really pleased to have someone to draw with and talk art to. And there's no way Tony wouldn't jump at the chance to model. XD_


	6. Rushing Towards the Starlight

_I wrote the beginning of this chapter in church on Sunday... I regret nothing._

* * *

Clint was the first one who noticed the needle marks on Amy's arm. He'd stopped his forkful of eggs on its path to his mouth one morning, something that Tony knew could only be brought about by a true crisis, and as he'd stared at Amy like he'd only just seen her for the first time, she pretended he didn't exist. Another thing that never happened. The tentative chain of command dictated that Clint should tell someone, that someone being Tony, and Tony should tell their fearless leader.

Except that Tony didn't have the heart to.

It was one thing if Amy had told him, come to his workshop and admitted softly that she had a problem and needed help. But she acted like nothing was wrong and Tony would have been lying if he said he didn't feel a little guilty about the whole thing. He knew the pain Amy had to deal with now, _because of him_, and drinking hadn't been the only way he'd thought to deal with the new ache in his chest.

So he acted casually when she came around and wondered how best to break this to Steve. She wasn't showing the usual signs of a user, Jarvis had chimed in cheerfully during one brooding session to inform him or such, and he had doubts. Needle marks didn't equal drugs, Tony knew that all too well, and there were other explanations for the tiny dark marks on her skin.

Tony dodged Clint for a week further before the archer cornered him one night and told him to step up to the plate no matter the consequences. This was, in all technicalities, his fault, and he should be the one to set it right. And Tony was going to. He was going to go knock on her door and stage an intervention of epic proportions, but he didn't make it. Because there was a little gold LED blinking by the elevator, and he knew who was coming down long before they arrived.

Thor looked out of place among the machines and slick chrome surfaces of the workshop, but he took the change of scenery in stride and moved further into the space when Tony beckoned him closer.

"What can I do for you, Goldilocks?"

Thor quirked an eyebrow, long since having learned not to question the nicknames Tony gave him, and dipped his head for a moment before he spoke. "Have you noticed anything odd about Amelia lately?"

Well, Tony thought, Thor certainly didn't beat around the bush. "Odd how?" He wouldn't lie, if directly asked, but he also wasn't about to offer up information that Thor did not already have without very good reason.

"Physically," Thor replied promptly, "anything odd physically."

And then and there Tony decided there wasn't anyone more equipped to pull off schemes of epic proportions than the God of Thunder himself. "The needle marks, you mean?" He clarified casually, struggling to keep his cool in the face of impending judgment.

"Indeed," Thor's tone was soft, "I was unsure of their origin, but I had hoped you might know."

It wasn't judgment, exactly, it was more an invitation to own up and explain. Tony could have been doing blood-tests or check-ups, or booster shots after all the stress. A hundred different possibilities flooded his mind, but he dismissed them all in favor of the truth. "Self-inflicted, I think." And that admission had been so easy and painless; he wondered why it had taken him so long to say it, no matter to whom.

"I see." Thor nodded once and turned on his heel. "Thank you for telling me, my friend."

The doors hissed close softly behind him and as it rose higher into the Tower, Tony felt the weight of that secret go with it.

And he really hoped that weight wouldn't come raining back down on Amy's head at the hands of the God of Thunder.

* * *

The roof of the Tower, which had been outfitted with several café tables and numerous chairs, saw more traffic in and out than most other rooftops overlooking Manhattan. For one part, this particular roof sat head and shoulders above most others, and for another, it was safe to sit on alone at night in order to look out and enjoy the view. Although light pollution was still a problem so near the heart of the bustling city, a few stars could still be seen twinkling bravely in the cast oblivion overhead.

The real reason Amy chose to sit out under the stars, however, was because she liked the peace. Although what peace she found in the noisy night air was still a mystery to her fellows.

That was where she was currently perched, sketching an outline of the Manhattan skyline as she sat curled up on one of the deck chairs she'd repositioned right by the railing. It allowed for a better view without her actually sitting on the edge of the roof and possibly falling, although Tony had assured her that wouldn't happen, and she liked being able to move about when one position got uncomfortable. The view provided from this vantage point was beautiful, and Amy was smiling as she continued to sketch the slowly darkening sky.

She hardly noticed the sound of approaching footsteps until the visitor was right on her, peering over her shoulder at the sketch pad in her lap. "Nice night, isn't?" She asked offhandedly as she threw a glance over her shoulder at the blond behind her.

"Most pleasant." Thor replied softly, inhaling deeply. The air up here was cooler, crisper, but still not as clean as the air in Asgard that he was used to. "But that is not why I am here, Amelia."

"I thought not." She replied softly, setting her pencil down and looking up at him again. "So why might you be here, then, if it is not for the night air?"

Thor sat next to her, elbows resting on his knees, and let out a soft sigh. "Amelia, it has come to my attention that there are small injuries on your arms that were not there before… Injuries that are likely self-inflicted." He paused before continuing. "I know you and I are not as well acquainted as the others, but if there is something you…"

He trailed off as her hand landed lightly atop his. "Thor," she sounded close to laughter as she gave his hand a slight squeeze, "they are tranquilizers to help me sleep. Doctor Banner gave them to me. The only reason I'm injecting them instead of taking pills is because it acts more quickly and with more potency."

Thor blinked, comprehension dawning. "Then, they are not harming you?" He confirmed softly.

Amy shook her head, smiling gently. "But I thank you for your concern."

"It would not do for me to ignore the needs of my comrades, despite not being the leader of our troupe." He gave her a gentle smile. "I am quite pleased to know you are safe, Amelia." He placed his free hand over her own, squeezing gently. "I would be most grieved to discover you were in any sort of danger."

Amy continued to stare at him, a rather giddy grin tugging at her lips until she shook herself and extracted her hand from his. He looked slightly disappointed until she shook her head, hurrying to explain. "You have such a strong personality; it's a little overwhelming without having read you first."

Thor took back one of her hands and gave her a shy, encouragingly hopeful smile. "And if you were to read my heart, Amelia, what then?"

"Then it would be much easier to hold your hand." She replied with a grin. "And given your sudden propensity for it, it might not be such a bad idea."

Thor laughed, the sound carrying out over the rooftop and down into the streets below. "So it would seem."

She recaptured her hand and stood, motioning him back into the seat so he could lie back and relax. "Now, I'm going to give you the same offer I gave Bruce and Tony… If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a container for it, and put the memories inside. Anything will work, really, a chest or a door. Even a vase, if you felt like it."

"Would that not defeat the purpose?" Thor questioned, raising an eyebrow at her. "I was led to believe this was meant to give you the information you required, no matter what. Would not my holding something back disrupt that?"

She looked, for a moment, genuinely surprised before she smiled again. "No, Thor. There are some things that are meant to be kept to one's self, I think. I won't be offended if there are memories you would rather I not have." She sat next to him, mirroring the position she'd been in with Tony only a few days earlier.

He seemed to think it over seriously for a moment or two before he shook his head, giving her a crooked smile. "It would not do for me to keep secrets from one like you. I trust you, Amelia, and I trust you will keep my secrets as well as I do."

"Relax, then," she breathed, looking stunned but somehow proud at the same time, "this will only take a moment."

Thor took several deep breaths before he nodded to her with a faint smile, and she pressed a hand over the plain shirt he was wearing in place of his armor that evening. For the span of a heartbeat, nothing happened, but then Amy's shoulders hunched forward and her head lolled back, her mouth open in a silent scream. He tried to move, to speak, to do something, but the fingers on his chest dug in deep against the fabric and a rush of a command filled his head with a booming voice that sounded like no other he had heard.

_Stay_.

The single word kept him where he was for an agonizing two minutes before Amy wrenched her hand away and toppled backwards off the seat, gasping in deep lungful's of air. She curled in on herself, an automatic defense against whatever might be trying to hurt her, and it was another several painfully long moments before Thor managed to pull her hands away from her face and see if she was alright.

There was a smear of blood against her forehead, where she'd landed hard against the roof's rough surface; and a wild light in her eyes. She was shaking uncontrollably, breathing still hard, and as Thor pulled her into his arms and then back into the seat, she began to calm.

"I am so sorry." She was still shaking, but her breathing had evened out and she no longer looked so scared. "There was just… I had not quite realized how long you have been alive."

A cold trickle of guilt made its way into Thor's chest, and he swallowed hard. "I should have warned you, Amelia, I am terribly sorry."

She shook her head, the tremors having finally stopped. "Do not apologize. It is not your fault." She closed her eyes, expression changing as she winced and pressed a hand to her forehead, curling in on herself once again. "I need you to get Bruce." She breathed when Thor tried to move in close again to help her. "And please hurry."

Thor was through the doors and down the stairs before she'd even finished her final sentence, his only thought now to find the good doctor and inform him that he had a patient in need of most urgent care.

* * *

_It's not a cliff-hanger, it's a dramatic, literary hook!_

_...Okay, fine, it's a cliff-hanger. XD  
_

_Reviews would be much appreciated!  
_


	7. This is a Gift, it Comes with a Price

_Apologies for the delay! I've been working on another project, of original fiction in fact, and have only just now had the chance to get back to this. Enjoy!  
_

* * *

Tony decided, after several hours spent mulling it over, that hovering was not for him. He didn't like it, nor did he like it when people did it to him, so he took himself off to his workshop and watched events unfold from the safety of his mechanical sanctuary and left the hovering to Clint and Thor.

_They_ were master hoverers.

Clint's motivation was fairly obvious; he cared about the girl now lying in Banner's lab with tests beeping in the background and a heart monitor letting them all know that she was still alive. Thor, for reasons unknown to all of them, felt guilty. He claimed this was all his fault, something Tony was sure was untrue, and that if he hadn't been so eager to trust Amy, none of this would have happened.

Bruce had given him a speech that boiled down to _you couldn't have known, don't stress out over it_, but the Thunder God looked less than pleased with the situation at hand, and Tony couldn't exactly blame him for that. In a way they'd all given bits of themselves over to the girl who now lay as still as a statue on the lab bed, and not one of them intended to tell Fury what had happened. This was their fight, their battle, and they intended to see it through.

But when it came down to the actual battle, to swinging in and saving the day, none of them really had a clue what to do. They were out of their league when it came to helping a girl who couldn't hear them, couldn't see them or respond. Even Tony, who usually came up with a harebrained scheme that was just stupid enough to work at the last second, was stumped on what they should do. At least, he was until he remembered something very important that Amy herself had said.

"Wait, wait, can't we bring her out of it by making her read one of us?" They'd all stared at him, surprised and a little confused, until he had elaborated. "If Amy can't control when she reads someone, as long as skin-to-skin contact is made, shouldn't we be able to hold her hand or something and bring her out that way?"

Steve was frowning, eyebrows drawn together in thought. "I suppose it might work. But only if the person who wakes her knows what they're doing."

All eyes instantly turned to look at the lone archer in the room.

"Shouldn't Natasha do it?" Clint's voice was bordering on whiney, and they all knew why. He'd been the selective scapegoat for the operation at hand, and he wasn't exactly comfortable about it.

"No, I can't." The redhead looked almost a little sorry for the archer. Almost. "She hasn't read me, and she wasn't planning to. At this point one more voice in her head is going to do more damage than anything else."

"Then why can't Thor do it? He's the most recent addition…" Clint was grasping at straws, and Tony would have laughed if he hadn't been in the same position on more than one occasion.

"I do not think that wise," the blond by the bed spoke up, "I am the one responsible for this. It is because of my memories that Amelia has been so strongly affected. She would do better if you were to wake her, I think. She has a bond with you that is stronger than the rest of us."

There was no backing out of it now, Clint realized, and he resigned himself to his fate with a deep sigh. "Fine. But you are all waiting outside, and Tony," he shot a glare the way of the inventor, "I hear so much as a lens readjusting its focus and I will fillet you myself."

Tony wanted to respond to that, mostly likely with a threat of his own, but Steve was pushing him towards the door of the lab by the shoulders while Bruce gave Clint a general overview of the equipment, and what would he would need to alert them about if it showed up.

As the doctor slipped through the doors and out into the hall, the other Avengers heard Clint sigh again as he sat at Amy's bedside and gently took her hand in both of his.

Tony, for all his immaturity and unquenchable curiosity, didn't have the heart to listen in on the conversation. This was between the bowman and the Sleeping Beauty.

* * *

"Look, kid, I know I'm probably the last person you want to be hearing from right now…" Clint gave the girl next to him a shy smile. "I know I sound like a mother hen or something, but you've got us all worried." He knew he didn't have to speak out loud. All he had to do was think of the words and Amy would hear them, but it helped, somehow, to hear his own voice filter in with the mechanical sounds of the equipment behind her head. "I know Thor's a lot to take in," he sent a glance towards where said blond was standing, back to the glass lab doors, "trust me, I know. But you can't let him keep you down. You've had worse than that."

He remembered the way she'd reacted to reading him, the vomiting and headaches that had ensued from the memories he held of violence and vengeance. If he'd known at the time how badly she would react, he never would have let her read him. He would have told Fury to find another scapegoat for her to prove herself with, another agent without as much baggage. But it had been him she'd picked from the lineup, and she'd told him so many times not to blame himself for what she'd gone through.

He'd made her swear to never read another S.H.E.I.L.D agent, and she'd agreed.

And now that she was part of the team, working alongside Natasha, the Black Widow, and Clint had never been happier to know there were some memories that Amy would never have to know of.

"It'd mean a lot if you came back to us, kid." He whispered softly, resting his forehead against hers. "I can't do this without you, you know that. None of us really can. Tony's like a dog with a bone when he meets someone he likes, and he never lets go, and Steve is basically a walking teddy bear, ready to rip at the seams if something happens to a person he cares about. And don't even get me started on Banner; because that is one fiasco I do not want to have to think about."

The smaller hand in his gave a tiny twitch of its fingers, and Clint thought for a moment that he'd imagined it, before a rough, dry voice croaked out a laugh. "So what does that make Thor?"

In hindsight, kissing Amy probably was not the best idea, given that she'd just gotten her breath back, but that was not the first thing on Clint's mind as the realization that she was back and in one piece fitted together into his mind. In his defense, he aimed to one side of her mouth, no need for Tony to give him a full-blown lecture about propriety, and the hitch in her breathing was from surprise. "Welcome back."

He jumped a little when he felt her arms wrap around his neck and hold him in place, almost like he was a life raft in the middle of a stormy sea. "Thanks for bringing me back." She replied in a whisper, cool tears gathering at the edges of her eyes.

"You okay?" It was a dumb thing to ask, given that she'd just recovered from a comatose state and was crying, but he really needed to know. He needed to know Amy would make it through this with nothing more than a few bruises. He needed to know nothing important was broken.

"I'll mend." She replied, shrugging just a little as the lab doors slipped open and Bruce tentatively entered the space, clearing his throat as way of announcement that there were several concerned parties that wanted to know the exact same thing as Clint. "Come in, doctor, I won't shatter from too many voices in one space."

They shuffled in single file; all looking either contrite or concerned, and even Tony seemed more subdued than usual.

"Thor." Amy's tone was unmistakable. It was a summons for the Thunder God, and he responded instantly, moving over to the bed and taking the space that Clint hesitantly relinquished.

He opened his mouth, clearly ready to apologize for one thing or another, but he stopped when a set of lips descended gently onto his forehead. The same voice he'd heard before rushed through his mind, the tone so much softer now than it had been.

_This is not your fault, Odinson, and you should not feel regret._

Whatever apology he had been about to utter vanished from his mind, along with any regrets he had about the subject. In their place was a calm he had not felt in years, and as he stared at Amy with wide blue eyes, she winked at him before pulling a face and putting a hand to her head.

"Bruce, I don't suppose you have any more of those pain killers, do you? My headache is back."

* * *

Amy was perched on the roof of the Tower yet again, looking out over the concrete jungle of Manhattan with a slight smile. She wasn't perched in her usual chair, but was instead sitting further back from the railing, sketchpad nowhere in sight. She was simply enjoying the sounds of the city, so far below them, and wasting away the time before she went to bed away from her fellows and their pressing questions.

Footsteps sounded across the rooftop, and Amy turned in time to see Thor's faint smile before he sat next to her, eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at her, taking in each little detail of her face. "I was not aware that you could use telepathy, Amelia."

"Normally I can't." She admitted. "And I'm sorry I did what I did to you, but I had to. I couldn't let you walk around feeling bad about something you had no control over. The commands only work when I push hard enough to make them. Hence the ensuing headaches."

Thor sat back, expression relaxing into the gentle one he usually wore while in her company. "And I was worth pushing so hard?"

"You're always worth it." She agreed with a smile. "But I will have to be more careful from now on. I shouldn't try to read anyone else for a little while, at any rate."

Thor nodded, mulling something over for a moment before he spoke. "There is one thing I wish to ask about… My brother… Do you truly intend to read him as you have the rest of us?"

Amy blinked twice in quick succession. "I don't have a choice." She replied simply. "But even if I did, I think I would still want to know exactly what makes that brother of yours tick." She smiled. "If it's anything like how you do, he'll be worth every headache I get from it."

Thor managed a soft chuckle, feeling an odd mix of concern and pride swirl into his chest. No matter what came, or what his brother had to say on the subject, Thor intended to keep Amelia safe. Even if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

_After having taken several different surveys and discovering I'm most like Hawkeye (so not surprised), I've discovered a new-found appreciation for him. XD_

_Also, Thor continuously reminds me of my eldest brother , so I can't not write adorably fluffy scenes with him and Amy now.  
...Even though I'm not really complaining...  
_


	8. How Quickly the Glamor Fades

_I am so sorry this took so long!_

* * *

The snow was the worst, Amy decided as she lay in the cold light that filtered in from above and tried to stay awake. The ice didn't matter, a chilled solid block against her back, but the snow… The snow dappled softly against her face, tickling as it went, and burned more than the ice around her did. She wanted to scream, but her throat felt as frozen as the rest of her. She couldn't move, couldn't feel, could barely breath or even think.

The cold was suffocating, stifling as it closed its walls around her and refused to let her escape. There was no way out of the icy prison, no way to escape the cold clutches that were holding her down and keeping her here. Keeping her from breaking free and escaping.

A molten trail of heat suddenly blazed its way up her arm, and fingers of pure fire curled over her shoulder and squeezed, shattering the rest of the ice. She gasped, eyes flying open to look up into a set of matching blue, the emotion within one of concern.

"Amy?" Steve paused, the hand still on her shoulder as he sat on the edge of her bed. "Your door was unlocked, so when I thought I heard you crying, I…"

He stopped as she sat up fully and pulled him to her, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. "Don't apologize." He felt like coals as she curled in closer around him. "Oh please don't apologize, you feel delightful."

The Captain's shoulders stiffened just a little, an indication of how embarrassed that sentiment had made him, but he stayed where he was and took the treatment being bestowed upon him. "Are you alright, Amy?"

She nodded, pulling back far enough to smile at him. "I am now, Captain. Sorry to have worried you." She gave his shoulders a squeeze, stealing some more warmth from him before she pulled away entirely, a shiver running through her as his body heat was taken away. "Just a bad dream."

Steve's eyebrows drew together as he looked her over closely. "Just a dream?"

From the hand he still had resting on hers, she could feel the emotions rushing through his mind. "Captain, please stop worrying," she smiled at him a second time, "the dreams are a completely normal part of my ability. I'm used to it by now."

"That doesn't mean I have to approve of it." Steve muttered. "Especially…" He trailed off, but Amy still heard him, even though he'd stopped speaking verbally.

"It's not your fault," Amy replied softly, "at least, not _entirely_ your fault." She grinned, maneuvering herself out of her bed and into the middle of her room. "So please, don't look like a kicked puppy when I tell you I've had a bad dream. Who said your memories were the ones that triggered them, anyway?"

Steve didn't reply, but as Amy slipped out of the room, she heard him mutter under his breath. "A kicked puppy…?"

* * *

"I can't believe you called him that," Tony continued to chuckle into his coffee mug, "poor Steve. Direct hit, right into his pride!" He grinned over at the girl sitting opposite him at the worktable, her eyes carefully trained downwards. "He isn't the only one, though, is he? The others do it to you too." The question was spoken in a light, teasing tone, but both of them knew how serious of an inquiry it was.

"Yes." She replied after a pause. "It's not their fault. I mean, it's not like they're trying to give me nightmares, or anything. It just sort of happens."

"And the way Jarvis automatically cranks your heating or cooling up in your room at night," Tony pressed on gently, "does that just sort of happen too?"

Amy shot him a warning look, but the AI in the ceiling answered coolly for her. "You should know, sir, that nothing I do merely happens for no reason."

"Then tell me, Jarvis," Tony skipped asking Amy for answers and decided to go to the source, "why do you adjust her room temp in the middle of the night, for _seemingly_ no reason?"

"I adjust the temperature in Miss Liddell's room when she asks for me to, sir."

Tony paused for a few seconds before looking back over the top of the table to Amy, their eyes meeting as he grinned. "So does that make me your desert and Steve your tundra?"

He managed to dodge the wrench she aimed at his head, especially since he doubted she'd really meant to hit him in the first place, and started to chuckle again. "You know, it's sort of ironic, that. Steve would be happy to be your heating blanket without any questions asked," he waggled his eyebrows at her, "but I'm at a total loss on how to cool you down."

He was thrilled to see the faint sheen of pink paint itself over her cheeks as he went back to tinkering like nothing had happened. "So, if I'm your desert and Steve's your tundra, what does that make everyone else? Is Thor your sky, or something?"

"Thor's bad memories mostly consist of being alone somewhere," Amy's voice was subdued, despite Tony's attempt to ask nicely and lightly about the other Avenger's fears, "so I suppose that would technically make him my dark." She looked up over her current project at him and smiled sadly. "Banner is my sky."

Tony remembered, like something from a bad dream of his own, the fall that the Other Guy had taken from their flying fortress back when Loki had still been on the loose. He could understand that being one of Bruce's bad memories, even though he might not remember all of it fully. Tony himself had never been particularly fond of falling either. "That leaves out Clint." He managed to get out with only a little difficulty.

"Clint's not on the menu." Amy replied instantly, without even blinking. "And I would appreciate it if you kept everyone else to yourself."

Tony wasn't exactly surprised, although admittedly a little proud, that the loyalty Hawkeye had for his little chick was reciprocated. "Pity, he looks like he'd taste divine with a little dipping sauce or something. Chocolate, maybe?"

That time, the wrench made contact with his shoulder, and would likely leave a nasty bruise, and the sheen on her cheeks was a vibrant crimson.

Tony could only grin.

* * *

Amy was once again perched on the Tower's roof, legs tucked up against her chest as she watched the world slip by. She was trying, desperately, to drown out the screams she'd been hearing in her skull for the past two hours whenever she closed her eyes.

There were memories she loved, like Thor's memories of childhood ramblings and wrestling with his little brother before the fire, or any number of tender moments between Bruce and the adorable little children he had taken to caring for way off in the farthest corners of the world. But there were other memories, memories that involved freezing oceans and planes that couldn't be put down safely, or fanatics who wanted firepower and were willing to do anything to get it, that made it hard for her to sleep some nights.

She was used to it, of course, used to the violence that played in her subconscious and the screams that sometimes resurfaced to haunt her during her waking hours, but, as Steve Rogers had put it, that didn't mean she had to approve of it. It was a side to her ability, her mutation; that she really would have rather done without. But it didn't work like that, not unless she had her subject pack away all the bad memories in a box. But even then, even when they did their best to hide it all away from her and protect her, things still slipped through the cracks and haunted her from afar.

She drew her knees up a little tighter to her chest and let out a sigh. Times like this, when she was all alone with her thoughts, she missed the feel of another human by her side.

Footsteps sounded softly across the rooftop, and a warm hand alighted onto her shoulder, almost as though the person now behind her had read her mind about needing company. "Hey," Clint's voice was soft, "everything okay?" His fingers dug gently into the fabric of Amy's shirt before they loosened, and the archer perched onto the seat next to her. "Or have you taken up my habit from some other reason than escape?"

She managed a soft smile, leaning into him slightly. "Nightmares, actually." She shrugged, her shoulder brushing lightly against his. "The usual, you know…"

Clint's eyebrows drew together in a frown, and he continued to look out over the Manhattan skyline. "Whose are they this time?" He sounded the way he always did when he asked that question. His tone was defensive and annoyed, like a big brother who wanted to know who'd pushed his little sis out of her swing.

"Not yours." She answered softly. "That's about as narrow of a field as I can provide."

He gave her a disapproving look. "Amy…"

"Don't _Amy_ me, Mr. Barton. I can't help it, and you know that perfectly well. So don't look so very disapproving when I tell you something you already know."

The archer continued to frown out over the city, but he spared her an amused glance before he sighed and started to rub at his eyes. "I still don't like it."

"No one seems to." She replied gently. "But that doesn't change the fact that it happens."

"What if it could change?" He asked suddenly. "What if someone stayed with you when you slept," he sent her a casual glance from the corner of his eye, "stayed and made sure your dreams were sweet?"

Amy stared at him, gaze soft. "Oh, Clint…" She laughed, leaning her head on his shoulder and managing to lace her fingers through his. "Has anyone told you lately what a totally _hopeless_ romantic you are?"

He grinned, giving her hand a squeeze and tipping his head to rest against hers. "Not lately, but reminders are always nice." He chuckled along with her, keeping still so they could stay stacked together carefully. "Is it weird for me to say I missed you?" He asked after a few minutes of silence.

"No," Amy replied softly, "not unless it's weird that I missed you too."

"Well I am a pretty awesome guy; I can see why you'd miss me."

Amy grinned. "So what's your excuse then, hmm?"

He pulled away enough to press a quick kiss to her forehead, a little shyly. "I never had anyone to practice at the range with before. Never had anyone here who really knew me, besides Natasha…" He shrugged slightly, trying not to dislodge her head from its perch on his shoulder. "It's nice, you know."

"I know." Amy replied softly. "Believe me, I know."

A soft cough from behind them made them both jump slightly and turn towards the door that led down into the rest of the Tower. Natasha was standing there, hands tucked behind her back and a faint smile tugging on her lips. "Sorry to interrupt, Amy, but Director Fury is downstairs, and he's looking for you."

Amy gave her a quick nod, stood with a small apologetic smile to Clint, and slipped out the door past Natasha.

"How long have you been standing there, exactly?" Clint asked suddenly, giving the assassin a suspicious glance.

"Long enough," she replied casually as she turned on her heel and headed back the way she had come, "Mr. Awesome."

* * *

_Oh my word._

_I could _not_ resist the jab at Steve about looking like a kicked puppy, or the comment made by Tony about Clint and dipping sauce.  
C'mon, you know they're both true. ;P_

_Hopefully the next chapter won't take me nearly so long to write, and again I'm sorry I didn't get this up sooner. Thanks for hanging in there, though!  
_


	9. The Changing Wind

_So, if you're part of Loki's Army, you're not allowed to throw rocks at me at _any point_ during this chapter... Understood?_

* * *

There was a fluttering in Amy's heart as she waited on the same spot Fury had left her, staring intently at a spot on the carpet, all of her attention directed towards it and not on what Fury had said. Not the warmth of his hand as it had rested for a fraction of a second on her shoulder. Not the brunette that was now locked up in one of the lower levels. Not the blond who was hovering by the door, probably counting to a certain number before he moved in further.

"Amelia…?" His voice was soft and soothing, relaxing in the extreme amid the chaos inside her head. "Are you sure you wish to go through with this?" He put a hand gently against her back, a motion more intimate than Fury's quick assurance.

"I don't really have a choice, Thor." She replied with a sad smile "Not this time."

He continued to frown, clearly displeased with the entire situation. "Fury intends for you to read him fully, does he not? To learn all of his secrets, without any constraints?"

She nodded silently, trying not to remember how it had hurt when she'd read Thor. Loki's memories scared her, and she hadn't even seen them yet. There had been so much time he'd spent in the void, spent out of reach of those that actually cared for him. He had been broken, Amy knew, and she was afraid she would follow suit.

"We will be here for you, Amelia," Thor's voice gave away the hesitation he was feeling; "we will all be here when you emerge on the other side." He smiled at her, a silent prayer for her safety rushing through his mind.

"Thank you." She replied softly. "Here's to the other side, then." She grinned, slipping from his grasp and moving out the door with a quiet sigh and only a touch of hesitation in her step.

* * *

The cage, for there was no term more appropriate, was positioned at the center of the room. Tubes ran from the walls to the top of the container, feeding in air and more than likely a few choice drugs to keep their visitor docile. The brunette was standing calmly at the center of the cage, keen eyes looking out through the clear walls and surveying his surroundings the way a cat might survey the fish that swam just out of its reach.

Amy stood just inside a door on one smoothly curved wall, the two-way mirror keeping her safe from those unnerving eyes and the man they belonged to.

"Jarvis knows what to do," Tony was saying to her softly, "so just give him the signal and he'll gas the little git."

Amy managed a faint smile, shaking her head slightly as Tony turned and fled back down the corridor, having been ordered to stay in the control room in case something went wrong.

As soon as the door had closed behind the brunette, the door before her slid silently open, and she moved through it with a brave mask quickly taped in place. She stopped only a few steps into the room and paused. Her appearance instantly earned the attention of the caged creature at the center of the room, and he looked her over intently. It was unnerving to be surveyed so closely, and she started moving around the edge of the room just to give her body something to do.

"Do they intend for you to be bait?" He asked finally, continuing to watch her. "They certainly start you young here on Midgard. Not that I am surprised by that fact."

Amy stayed silent, wondering how long she could keep him talking under his own power. If Thor's memories were accurate, his little brother liked the sound of his own voice.

"What, no reply? And here I imagined bait was meant to try and hook the intended prey." He paused, as though trying to place her; and Amy almost laughed at him for even attempting to do so. "You seem different from the others, though. You do not look like you belong here."

Tony's personality kicked in suddenly, and Amy spoke without actually having meant to. "Oh, you're one to talk about belonging."

"Oh, she speaks!" Loki snapped back automatically, and Amy knew she'd hit a nerve. "Be still my heart, the bait can talk back." He'd started to move, agitation making him nervous enough to need motion. "Well then, bait, not that I know that tongue of yours can wag, perhaps you'd tell me why it is they've sent you here."

"You said it yourself," Amy admitted softly, "I don't look like I belong." She felt a thrill run through her at the way his eyes narrowed, as though he could read all her secrets just by studying her hard enough.

"Then from whence do you hail?" He asked with a faint smirk, tipping his head to one side. "Some distant star, perhaps? Some leviathan Fury dredged up from the depths? A shadow dragged into the light? Or are you a creature that dwells closer to home?"

"A shadow? I hardly think that's a fitting description, Laufeyson," she spread her hands out to either side, turning to face him full-on for a moment, "do you?" She turned backed parallel to the cage and continued her circuit, aware of the anger rolling off him in waves at the use of that name.

"Then what are you?" His eyes narrowed even further as he continued to inspect her movements minutely.

"Someone looking for answers, clearly." She gave him a sardonic smile. "But you knew that already, didn't you?" She paused near where she'd come into the room, having finished her walk around the cage. "One of a multitude of machinations that that whiz through that fine mind of yours, I imagine." She took a few short steps closer, taking in a few deep breaths to steady herself. "Jarvis."

Loki's eyes snapped up to look at the ceiling of his cage where the tubes had begun feeding in the drug Bruce had designed to sedate the deity. His lips parted in a snarl as his knees made contact with the cell's floor, his arms sagging at his sides and his head tipping back. His breathing slowed, and his whole body went slack. He toppled like a domino at the will of a higher power, and there was something very thrilling in knowing that he could be reduced to a shuddering heap by simple science.

The cell vented as soon as his eyelids began to flutter shut, and Amy managed to catch him before he fully collapsed onto the floor. She laid him out gently, pushing his raiment gently out of the way and laying her hand over his heart. The door of the cell sealed shut behind her, closing her in with the creature in the cage.

* * *

He could feel her inside his mind, roaming and reading and wreaking havoc with his head. Whatever those Avengers had pumped into his prevented him from doing anything but watching in horror as his whole life was laid out for her to pick over at her leisure. In the world around him, he knew this couldn't be taking much time, but here it went by agonizingly slowly. Every second of his life, even ones he had not remembered fully himself, were parading across the forefront of his mind for this girl to see.

It hurt, not in a physical way, but it burned to have someone he didn't even know this close to him. To have some stranger trawling through his secrets with no regard for his own wishes. All the anger he had felt, all the rage and righteous fury, all the anguish and abandonment gave way to wave upon wave of pure terror. Nothing slipped past her; no tiny detail was safe from her gaze. The things he'd been put through, the things he'd hidden from everyone, the things he'd thought he'd buried so deep no one would ever find them. But she did. This human, this peasant that had dared to taunt and touch him, dared to speak to him like an equal, _she_ was able to see every secret he'd ever hidden away, unravel every lie his silver tongue had ever spun.

And all she'd had to do was touch him.

His heart raced as he tried to defend himself. She was exactly what he'd imagined her to be. A shadow. A wraith that was taking with her every fiber of who he was and twisting it to her own purpose. He couldn't stop her, couldn't push her out and away, couldn't shut off the flood of memories that burned white hot through his mind. He couldn't control her, couldn't even control what memories she saw, what truths she uncovered. And it was that, more than anything, that terrified him.

He awoke with a start, his body trembling until he regained control of all his faculties. He took in deep breaths of air, his head throbbing painfully for a moment or two before his whole body relaxed again, and he managed to push himself up into a more comfortable position. A growl slipped unbidden from his lips, and he ground his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the lights that were scorching trails across his retinas. It didn't help, however, as in the dark he relived the sensation of being searched. He opened his eyes with a sharp gasp, and that's when he saw her.

She was sitting on the other side of the cage, expression calm as she merely stared at him steadily. "Tony really wasn't kidding about those drugs. I'm surprised I woke up before you."

He stared back silently, finding no words quite vehement enough to convey how he felt.

"It's not pleasant, is it?" She continued softly. "Head and heart still pounding, emotions in a crumpled wreck somewhere in the bottom of your stomach, that knowledge that you're no longer the one in control…" She grinned nastily. "So tell me, how do you like it, this thing you call freedom?"

His hands were on her throat before he had even realized he'd moved. He squeezed as hard as he could, the sting of his hatred making his hands grip tighter, wrap more roughly around her slim neck. He felt tendons bend and give way to his wrath, felt her neck snap like a twig beneath his hands.

He watched as she dissolved into nothing, and he was left holding air in his hands.

"Is that the first time you've stooped to getting your hands so thoroughly dirty?" Her voice was calm as she spoke from just outside his cell. "Or do you give all your murders the personal touch?" She was leaning casually against his cage wall, having moved out from behind the bracer she'd been hiding behind.

He growled, up on his feet and slamming a fist into the side of his cell before she'd had a chance to do more than blink. "I will not stand for this!"

"Well, technically, you didn't stand for it." She grinned again, indicating where he'd strangled the mirage. "You fell for it." Somewhere up in the control room, Amy knew Tony had just let out a cheer.

"You petty, foolish, ignorant _human_. How dare you defile the mind of an Asgardian prince? Do you know what I will do to you once I am free of this cage?"

"You'll break me, right?" She replied automatically. "Mind, body, soul. Because that's what they did to you, isn't it, when Thor let you slip into the abyss. That's what became of you out there in the void."

She watched the fight leave him in a single breath, as though all his anger had been exhaled against the walls that surrounded him. The fist he'd been holding against the glass flattened, and his mouth went slack. His eyes widened minutely, and moisture rimmed his bottom lids. His breathing was ragged for a moment longer before he drew himself up once more, his shell fitting back together after that brief fracture had revealed too much. "No." He breathed out. "No, I will not allow you to play with my mind any longer. I will not fall for your trickery a second time."

"I don't intend to turn you into my private source of entertainment." Amy pressed her hand onto the glass opposite his, her expression softening. "I have seen the farthest reaches of your soul, Loki Laufeyson, and I shudder in terror when I think of all the horrors you have been made to suffer through."

"You cannot possibly begin to comprehend…"

"The pain," she interrupted softly, "the madness, the dark? The hate, the hurt, the vengeance? The betrayal?" She gave him a sad smile. "I don't have to imagine it; I've felt it firsthand…" She pressed closer to the glass. "I've felt everything you have, every joyful moment, every second of fright or embarrassment, every ounce of pain. All of it.

"How can you stand it?" His tone held none of the anger from before, all of it stripped away to reveal a gentler voice and a softer tone, something almost fragile in his eyes as he looked down at her. "How can your mind contain all of that when it is not meant to hold more than your own share of memories?"

Amy took several shaky steps backwards, making for the door she'd entered through. "I don't contain it," she said with a shrug, hearing the door open behind her, "at least, not very well." She spun on her heel and was swallowed by the hallway, the door closing behind her at the same time that her knees connected with the floor. She heard footsteps hammering her way along the dim passage before her world faded to black, and she collapsed fully against the dark carpet.

* * *

_No throwing stones, remember!_

_And I have to say, this whole fiasco with Loki just made my day. I love writing for him, I really do, so getting to do it in a situation like this is simply lovely.  
_

_Okay, reviews would be lovely, and as long as it doesn't involve throwing any hate my way, it's all good. XD  
_


	10. Lion Hearted Girl

_I apologize for how long this chapter took to finish and upload, but I hope you'll enjoy it now that it's here!_

* * *

Clint didn't want to admit it, to himself or anyone else, but he needed to run. Everyday seeing Amy laid out in her room, oblivious to the rest of the world, and Fury hovering just a few feet away from her door, waiting for Banner to give him an update, or Thor to stop sulking at her bedside and leave so he could go in and check on her, was beginning to get under his skin.

It was effecting Tony too, he could tell, because the inventor spent more time in his workshop than anywhere else, and even Loki, who knew nothing about her, seemed subdued ever since she'd read him. It was like she could push something into you with those touches she used to read minds, like she put something inside to make up for all she'd taken out. It hurt, in a way he didn't know how to explain, and that made him eager for work.

He wanted a mission, something obscenely difficult or convoluted that would involve them flying half way across the world for just one villain, because he _had_ to get out of the Tower. He had to stop going by her room just to see if her situation had changed, even though Bruce had promised to let them all know the moment anything changed. He had to stop beating himself up over something that had been completely out of his control in nearly every way. He had to stop caring, if only for a little while.

And finally, like a gift from on high, Fury had told them there was a crisis that they needed to take care of, and the only one who would be staying behind was Bruce, so he could look after their patient. Thor looked like he might flash fry the Director for not letting him stay as well, but Tony and Steve had talked him out of anything rash in time to save them all from getting into way too much trouble.

It stewed in the back of his mind the entire ride there in the jet, like a bitter taste he couldn't get out of his mouth, but he fought it back in order to pay attention to the matter at hand. They would save the world one more time, go back to the Tower, and solve the Amy issue like they had last time. They just had to wait it out until she was ready to come back to them.

Clint just hoped that would be soon, because he didn't think he could take the strain of not knowing for much longer.

* * *

Jotunheim was dark, and as she stood on a high shelf of rock and ice, looking out over the desolate landscape, she wondered at the nature of the creatures that could endure such cold. Were they themselves cold hearted, in order to carry on life in this barren waste, or had some other attribute lent itself to their survival for so many years. Whatever the case, there was a flare of pity in her chest for them, this tattered race that could no longer hold its head high and say with dignity that they were the Frost Giants of old.

No one remembered the old days, when Odin had first taken the throne and had beaten back the frigid tide of Jotunheim, ensuring Midgard's safety. It had been simpler then, all of it, all the humans treating them as the gods they were, praising them on bended knee for their gifts and their merciful treatment. But they had not stayed that way, had not stayed so trusting. They had turned their backs on those they had once worshiped, and she wondered what life might have been like if they had not done so. If they had merely trusted in their gods, instead of abandoning them for things they could better understand and better control.

Towering structures rose high above her head, crumbling even now in the silence that surrounded her and swirled to mix with the snow. She could sense them skulking through the shadows after her, following her every move with their scarlet eyes, just waiting for the perfect moment to strike… And yet they did not. They knew an ally when they saw one, and she had an offer for them that they would be unable to refuse. In these, their dwindling days, they would leap at the best offer for salvation that was offered them, and they would do so without a second's hesitation.

"_Kill him."_ The command rung out strong and simply through the otherwise silent court, and the blue beasts that had been lurking just out of sight began to move forward, always ready for a fight.

"_And after all I've done for you."_ The words were from her lips, but she did not recognize her own voice. This was not her memory; this was not where she was meant to be. She had to wake up. She had to get back to where she belonged before the Giants tore her limb from limb and laughed over her rotting corpse.

Amy was screaming when Bruce looked into her room, and it took him only a second to react. The door slid open when he touched it, and in a manner of seconds she was curled around him, sobbing into his shoulder as her skin melted from a deep azure blue to the creamy tone it usually had. She clung to him as though even a fraction of an inch between them would mean she was doomed. He rubbed circles into her back, aware that her skin felt oddly cool, and he muttered a command to Jarvis which resulted in the heat suddenly coming on, warming the room by several degrees.

"I'm so sorry, Bruce, I didn't mean to scare you." She had regained control of her voice, if only just barely, and he could still feel her shaking. "And I thought _it_ was a bad dream…" She let out a shaky laugh; face still hiding against his shoulder as they sat on her bed.

"Don't worry about it." He replied softly, looking over her shoulder to where the readings were coming in from the instruments he'd strapped her up to. She seemed fine, except for an elevated heart rate, and even that was beginning to even back out as they continued to sit in silence. "You're safe now."

She laughed again, a little more loudly, and shook her head. "I doubt that, but thanks for thinking it." She slowly pulled away from him, and he felt his heart skip a few beats when he looked in her eyes and saw two crimson orbs looking back. "I think I'll be alright now, doctor, if there's something you need to get back to."

He nodded absently, letting her pull away properly and sit on her own beside him. Something in him decided that as soon as the others got back, they would be having a very serious meeting somewhere Amy couldn't hear them, and talking about what had just happened at length.

It was not every day ordinary girls turned into blue-skinned creatures with crimson eyes.

* * *

"Jarvis, play back the video from the time Bruce is describing, would you?" Tony's voice was only a little strained, as though he were trying to keep a lid on whatever emotions were bubbling just below the surface, and as the voice in the rafters complied with his request, he almost couldn't bring himself to look at the screen and see what Bruce had seen. But something in him, some morbidly curious molecule, told him he had to look, and so he did. His heart skipped a few beats, and he was almost positive the light from his arc reactor had flickered in an unsure way, because what he'd just seen could not be real.

"The temperature in the room dropped several degrees after the… transformation." Jarvis informed them casually. "I cannot explain either her sudden change in appearance, or the change in temperature."

"I can." Thor's voice was barely above a whisper, and yet he still instantly commanded their attention. "Loki is of Asgard, but that is not where he was born… My father took him in when he was but a child, and he grew up in the courts of Asgard as one of our own." He paused, glancing from the loop of video to his comrades and then back again. "He was born on Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants."

It took everyone else about two seconds longer than it did Tony to figure out the relevance of that sentence. "So that," he indicated the screen; "is how Loki looks on a bad day?"

"Correct," the blond replied, "and although I am unsure of how Amelia is now able to change her shape, it would make sense for her to revert back to that coloring if she were dreaming of Jotunheim." He frowned at the screen again, and Tony could have sworn he saw something like pain flutter over the thunder god's face. "Who should speak with her, now that we all know what has become of our little fledgling?"

Bruce looked a little amused by the title he'd given her, but he shook his head. "No one is going to be talking to her about this." He waited until they'd all turned to look at him, similar looks of surprise on their faces, before he continued. "We have to believe that she'll trust us with the information when she's ready. If we rush this…" He trailed off and glanced around the table, trying to intimate with a look what he couldn't bring himself to say out loud.

If they rushed this, they could ruin whatever tentative relationship they'd built with her thus far. They could ruin this whole operation. They could ruin her.

* * *

There was a tell-tale hiss from the pipes above him before he felt himself start to lose power over his limbs. He slumped against the wall, dropping to a sitting position and scanning the room for the intruder to his cell. He didn't like it, this feeling of helplessness that washed over him when he was submitted to this sort of arduous attention. It was demeaning and made him feel small, the way he had eons ago when he'd been a little boy looking for shelter in his mother's arms. But then a voice drifted across the cell to him, and his head snapped up at the summons, the drug he'd inhaled making his vision a bit fuzzy around the edges and his reactions less sharp.

"Hello." Amy was sitting across from him in the same position, knees drawn up to her chest and her hands in her lap. "Sorry about that," she glanced up at the ceiling, "they insisted, even though I didn't want to." She wasn't looking at him directly, as though she was embarrassed, and she continued to fiddle with her hands.

"Why are you here?" The usual edge was missing from his voice, but his tone was still cool. "I thought you had what you needed from me."

She did look at him then, and a jolt ran down his spine when he saw that her eyes were crimson. "I wanted to be sure you were alright. I'm not the only one that has adverse reactions to a reading." She shrugged, returning her gaze to her lap. "None of the others seemed to have side-effects, but they're only human."

He managed a faint smile, feeling oddly at ease with her there. She wasn't trying to intimidate him, or overpower him in anyway. She was simply worried, concerned for his well-being, and however foolish he may have thought her because of it, he still appreciated the effort. "The drugs I just inhaled seem to be impairing some of my finer motor skills," he flexed his fingers and watched how slowly they moved against the floor, "aside from that, however, I appear to be fine."

She nodded, still keeping her gaze averted from him. "No attempt to snap my neck this time, then?" She questioned, and he caught the sarcasm in her voice. "Because if that's how you're going to play, I'll have to take drastic steps against it."

"I won't lay a hand on you unless you lay one on me first." Loki replied smoothly, acutely aware of exactly how much distance was between them in the cell. "That's quite the trick, I will admit. How do you manage it, exactly?"

"How do you manage all the things you do?" She rejoined instantly, and he watched as her skin melted from white to cobalt. "How do you manage to keep this inside?"

The muscles in his jaw jumped with the strain as it clenched, and he looked away from her instantly. It hurt to see that… That _form_ on someone else, someone who appeared so human even with a different coat of paint upon their skin. "That is not your concern."

"It is now." She replied calmly, and from the corner of his eye he saw her skin return to its usual shade, eyes fading back to their soft blue as well. "Although I'm not nearly as cool to the touch as you are when you lose control." She paused, hands drifting up to rest atop her knees. "It irks you, doesn't it? Knowing that your secret is out." Her expression softened as she pushed herself back up to her feet. "But you should know; I'm very good at keeping secrets."

She slipped through the door before Loki could do more than blink, and as he watched her figure slip through another door and out of sight, he felt something wash through him uncomfortably. Here was a girl who knew all his secrets, and whom he only had her word for that she would keep them. His nails bit into the soft skin of his palm as his fingers clenched. He would be free from this cage, he decided, and he would show her just how mad the darkness had driven him.

* * *

_Even though NaNoWriMo is this month, I intend to keep up with this story, so never fear, dear readers, you shall not be abandoned! :D_


	11. Ready for a Fight

_Toldja I wouldn't abandon you! :D_

* * *

Tony jolted awake to the sound of the alarm blaring into his workshop, lights flashing frantically and Jarvis telling him in a tone that bordered on panicked that they had an escaped prisoner. The last time Loki had slipped his chains, all hell had promptly rained down on their heads, and Tony, personally, was more than a little ready to do whatever it took to avoid that particular fiasco a second time around.

"Where is he, Jarvis?" He asked as he slid into his suit, the movements coming as second nature to him now after all this time.

"He is currently making his way towards Miss Liddell's room, sir." Jarvis replied patiently, the HUD in Tony's helmet flaring to life and showing him a 3-D blueprint of the Tower and a little red dot growing closer to a yellow one. "He appears to be doing his utmost to make it there before anyone else, sir… I suggest we take immediate action if we wish to keep him from harming her."

Tony almost rolled his eyes, and would have certainly done so if he hadn't been preoccupied climbing into the elevator and hitting the nice shiny button that put it into overdrive and rise up stories like nobody's business. "No, really? Where's everyone else, anyway? I don't see any other movement on that level."

"Captain Rogers and Doctor Banner are currently sealed inside their rooms, sir, I believe Loki overrode the protocol system and disabled their ability to leave. Agents Barton and Romanoff are out on a mission, sir, and Thor is currently attempting to free himself from the inside of Loki's previous containment cell."

Tony did roll his eyes that time. "He just never learns, does he?"

"In his defense, sir," Jarvis responded tactfully, "I believe Loki switched their positions with a spell, placing himself in Thor's room and the thunder god in the cell. I do not have any record of Thor leaving his room prior to Loki's escape."

Tony sighed heavily, more than ready to kick Loki's magical, mystical hide and get back to sleep. "Great, so I'm on my own, then?"

"Not exactly, sir, you are forgetting Miss Liddell."

Tony wanted to question the A.I.'s sanity, but wasn't given the chance, because just then he was released out onto the floor Loki currently inhabited, and he went on high alert for any amount of movement. Jarvis provided him with a location for Loki, and various ways around the angry god and into Amy's room, but Tony ignored all of them in favor of his personal favorite. The direct approach.

An entire section of wall fell to the power of his suit as he shot through it like a massive titanium alloy bullet and crashed headlong into the brunette on the other side, tackling him to the ground and pinning him there. It took Loki a moment to realize what had happened, and in that moment, Tony took his next personal favorite approach. Playing the hero. "Amy!" He yelled into his helmet, Jarvis patching it through to her room instantly. "Amy, I need you to see if you can get down to Banner's room and get him out. I really need Big Green up here to help me out!"

The moment his surprise attack had earned him suddenly dwindled, and there was loathing in Loki's eyes as they stared up at him, rage making him more dangerous than any amount of calm might. He vanished out from under Tony, flickering back into corporeal form on the other side of the room, nearer to Amy's door than he had been before. He ignored the Avenger still crouched on the floor in favor of continuing down the hall towards the unprotected door of Amy's room.

"Sorry, Tony, but I can't do that." Amy's voice sounded in his helmet, the patch apparently working both ways. "There's something I have to do first."

"Like hell there is!" Tony responded angrily, standing up and raising one hand to aim at the middle of Loki's back. "The only think you have to do, Kiddo, is keep yourself from getting hurt while we handle this." He fired, and Loki dodged it like he might dodge out of the way of a harmless snowball, continuing to ignore Tony.

"Actually, no," Amy chuckled, but there wasn't much mirth in the sound, "there's something else I need to do before that." The door to her room opened as Loki's fingers found the knob and twisted it sharply to one side. "Stick around, Tony, you're gonna want to see this."

There was a faint _huh_ that echoed inside his helmet, the sound having come from his own lips, before his brain processed the sight of an airborne Loki properly, and he ducked in time to avoid a head-to-back collision with the god of mischief. The green and black projectile crashed unceremoniously into the wall behind him, a crater forming instantly from the impact, and Tony heard a low whistle both inside his helmet and from just outside Amy's room.

"I had no idea that would feel so good." She admitted, picking her way across the room carefully, eyes glued to Loki as he struggled upwards. "Not for you, obviously," she smirked, "but somehow I don't think I'll lose any sleep over that."

Loki was muttering something under his breath, likely impolite comments about Amy's mother, Tony guessed, and pushed himself back up with a little support from the wall, mouth twisted off at an unsavory angle as he watched her move closer. He looked part thoroughly petrified, part seething with malcontent, and Tony couldn't quite decide which was worse at the moment.

"You common little _whelp_," he breathed as she got within earshot of a hissing whisper, "how _dare _you…"

"How dare I?" She interrupted, bringing a hand up, palm facing him, and slowly closing her fingers in towards her palm. "How dare _you_? I gave you my word not to let slip your secrets, and _this_ is how you decide to show your gratitude?" Loki's breathing grew labored as his image blurred around the edges before coming fully into focus again, and Tony realized he was trying to pull his disappearing trick, and Amy wasn't letting him. "You were going to kill me, and then what? Face the combined wrath of all the Avengers? Run off to your precious darkness again? Vanish and hope they never found you?"

"I…" Loki's voice stopped before it ever really began, his breath reduced to tiny, shallow gasps. "I did not…" His breathing eased as he stopped trying to escape. "You…"

"Lesson to the less than competent," Amy said with a false smile, "you can't really sneak up on a telepath, no matter how hard you try to hide how you really feel about having your memories combed through and your magic stolen."

Inside his helmet, Tony's eyebrows rocketed up his forehead. It was less from surprise over what Amy was doing, she'd helped him build a new anti-gravity device four hours after reading him, it wasn't so very surprising, and more over how casually she had said it. She knew exactly what she could do now, perhaps with a few foggy areas, but not likely, and she wanted Loki to know it to. She knew that was what scared him, not being in control, and knowing that a human, mutant or otherwise, had stolen what made him the god of mischief was certainly worth panicking over.

She was within reach of him now, her hand slipping up around his throat and her eyes flashing green for the briefest of moments before they returned to blue, her voice filled with an odd edge that Tony didn't remember hearing before. "Sleep, Laufeyson, and when you wake know not to trifle with that which you cannot control."

Loki's eyelids dipped, the Asgardian struggling to remain awake. "You cannot control things like this so idly, Midgardian," he breathed out softly, "magic always comes with a price."

Amy released him, and he slumped back against the wall, slipping down to lay against the floor as the blond took several shaky steps back from him and closed her eyes, breathing hard. "Tony, gonna need you to catch me here…"

He moved quickly, jolted out of his whirring thoughts by the request, and gently put an arm against her back before she collapsed fully. "You… Okay? That seemed like a lot of mojo for one little girl."

She gave him a look, eyes still thankfully blue, and shook her head. "I'm fine, really… Just a little lightheaded."

"So why didn't you tell us you're suddenly Miss Magic, anyway? You threw him like Steve throws crumpled pieces of paper, which was amazing, by the way!"

"That's why," her breathing was less labored now, "I didn't want to worry you."

He gave her a look from inside his helmet, and hoped his tone conveyed the proper amount of disapproval. "Seriously? You thought _not_ telling us things would keep us from worrying? I'm sorry, did someone wipe your brain and implant false memories or something, because we both know you know better."

She laughed, standing up properly and shaking her head again. "I know, I know, but…" She sighed, looking over Loki's prone form. "It seemed like a good idea until I figured out how to work with it." She snapped her fingers, and Loki vanished, instantly replaced by a very confused looking Thor.

"Amelia!" He stared at her. "You are unharmed, good, I was worried my brother would attempt to…" He stopped, blinking. "Tony?"

Tony had begun laughing, the sound oddly tinny through his helmet's speakers, and held up his hands as Thor continued to stare at him expectantly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just…" He opened the visor of his helmet and looked at Amy. "Can you do that with everyone? Because I think we really need to have a talk about this before we go any further."

As Tony worked off his helmet, Amy perched on the arm of a nearby chair and closed her eyes, concentrating. A snap of her fingers later, Steve and Bruce were looking dazed and confused only a few feet from them. Clint looked the worst, however, since he toppled the moment he appeared, apparently snatched from wherever he'd been while in the process of sitting, and glaring at Tony as a fresh wave of laughter overtook the billionaire.

"Amelia," Thor finally interrupted what might well have escalated into a fight between Tony and Clint, "what happened here tonight?"

"She threw Loki into a wall." Tony said simply, deciding waiting for Amy to explain was entirely overrated. "Gold star to you, by the way." He added, looking over at her and winking.

"She did what?" Steve asked, looking between Tony and Amy. "Tony, that's…"

"Only possible because I stole Loki's magic." Amy interrupted gently. "When I read him, I picked up a thing or two, and well…" She shrugged, a second Amy flickering into existence next to the first. "Now I can use magic." They spoke in unison.

Clint was staring with his mouth slightly agape, and Tony was seconds from suggesting something that Pepper would undoubtedly slap him for later, but Thor beat him to the punch by opening his mouth. "I do not understand," he said softly, "how is it possible for you to do this? This kind of magic should put too much of a strain upon your body for it to be possible."

The clone Amy vanished and the original licked her lips normally. "It would put too much strain on a human, certainly, but you're forgetting; I'm not a human. Not… Well, not really, anyway." She lowered her gaze to the carpet, suddenly finding it fascinating enough to study in detail. "And I think, maybe, reading all of you first helped somehow."

Thor blinked, eyes softening as he continued to stare at her. "So you do not feel any ill effects from using so much magic?"

She glanced up, and Tony saw the blush creeping over her cheeks slowly. "I wouldn't say that, exactly."

"Then what would you say, exactly?" Clint asked.

"That I'm going to need help getting to my room," she admitted, "I can't stand."

Tony rolled his eyes, ready to haul her over to her room and make her more comfortable, but Thor beat him to it, scooping Amy up like she weighed next to nothing. "Very well, Amelia," the thunder god spoke gently as he carried her across the room, "we shall discuss this more in the morning."

They were all silent until Thor got back, and then Tony sighed. "Well, one thing's for sure."

"And what might that be?" Bruce asked him, hands buried deep in his pockets and expression pensive.

"Fury is going to throw an absolute _fit_ when he finds out."

* * *

_I don't think I'm that good with action scenes, so hopefully this at least turned out okay... Lemme know whatcha think, won't you?  
_


	12. The Final Sacrafice

_You'll likely hate me after you read this chapter, but I'm willing to risk it._

* * *

Tony was grinning as he slipped into the kitchen the next day and woke his coffee maker from its mechanical slumber in order to make a fresh pot. The mental image of Loki flying across a room at the wave of Amy's hand continued to delight him even so long after the incident, and he found himself incapable of keeping back his evident amusement and approval over the whole fiasco.

He'd dodged a bullet by being out of the Tower while Fury had pitched his fit that morning, thank God for Pepper and conveniently-timed business meetings, but now that he was back, he had every intention of kicking his feet up on his workshop and watching the freak-out on Jarvis's playback with a bowl of popcorn and possibly Amy to offer up commentary. Or snide comments, whichever came first.

He had a mug of coffee in hand as he rounded the corner that led to her room and dodged guiltily around the massive whole he'd left in the wall, making his way to her door and knocking gently on it. "Amy, I made coffee, if you want a cup, I can…" He stopped when he peered inside, spotting a blond, but not the one he'd been expecting, sitting on her bed. "Cap? Where's Amy?"

Steve looked like someone had just kicked his puppy while he watched helplessly from the clutches of some super villain, and that look did not bode well with Tony, no matter the circumstances involved. "She's gone, Tony." His tone was subdued, another bad sign, and he wasn't looking at Tony, which equated to a full-on disaster.

"Gone?" He repeated, an eyebrow arching at the depressed captain. "Gone where, Steve, you gotta give me more than that. It's a very tenuous term, and I'm uncomfortable with how vague it sounds." He paused for perhaps the time it took his heart to pound, which was what it was doing now that Steve had said the word _gone_, and then continued. "So, gone where? Back to Westchester? Back to S.H.E.I.L.D HQ? Back to England? Where?"

"She's gone with Thor." Steve answered unsatisfactorily.

"Steve!" Tony's voice rose enough to warrant a reaction, Steve's eyes drifting up to meet his. "Gone _where_?"

"To Asgard, Tony." He managed at last. "She's gone to Asgard."

Tony stared at him, only just managing to keep a grip on his coffee mug as he stared at their fearless leader with a mixture of surprise and complete horror on his face. "What…?"

"Clint was right, Fury threw a fit when he found out what she'd done, I don't know why he was so angry, but he was… Amy said she had a plan to control it, whatever that means, so Thor took her and left." He paused, gaze trailing away from Tony's. "I don't think she's coming back, Tony."

He stared at the captain for a full minute before he opened his mouth to reply. "You're joking, right? She has to come back, she's not from there, she can't _survive _there."

"According to Thor, she can now." Steve stood, looking for all the world like he was trying to cling onto his last vestiges of dignity and not lose it in front of Tony Stark of all people. "Just leave it, Tony, if she comes home, she comes home. If not…" He trailed off, and Tony didn't even want to think about how that sentence might have ended.

He spun on his heel and made for his workshop, determined to do something about this. He didn't care if he had to build a suit that could take him to Asgard and drag her back here himself, he was getting Amy back. He was _not_ going to abandon his lovely little Queen of Hearts so soon after having found her.

* * *

She had seen Asgard through the veil of another's memories before, but this… This was awe-inspiring. This made every other image in her mind fade away to mere memory as it painted itself so gracefully over the skyline and burned brightly into her mind. It glimmered and shone and she wanted nothing more than to run through its golden halls and drink in every detail that they would allow her to.

It was nothing short of perfect, at least she saw it that way, and it was difficult to contain her excitement as Odin, All-Father, swept down the steps down the steps from the throne and greeted his son with a smile. "Thor, it is good to see you home again…" He paused, peering over his son's shoulder to wear Amy stood, her head bowed. "I hear that you have brought a visitor, come, let me meet her."

Thor gently put a hand onto her shoulder, guiding her forward to stand level with him. "Father, I present to you Amelia Liddell of Midgard, a telepath and magician of some skill." He smiled brightly down at her, waiting for her to raise her head and look at the king of this realm.

She bowed as best she could, Thor's hand on her shoulder like a weight around her ankles dragging her under the surface of icy water, and when she straightened, she looked up in the gentle face of the All-Father. "It is an honor, my king, to meet you. May I extend my gratitude for being allowed to visit your beautiful city… It is something most Midgardians can only dream of."

He smiled, just a little, and inclined his head. "I have heard my son speak of you rather highly, and now that I see you, I can understand why." He paused again, looking her over for a moment. "I understand my younger son and yourself had an… interesting meeting on Midgard. Would you like to elaborate?"

"No, All-Father, I would not," Amy held her ground as she continued, "but I would beg the opportunity to speak with him, if I may?"

Odin raised an eyebrow at her for a moment before he nodded and motioned Thor off, letting his eldest son lead her away from the throne room and off to where the brunette was being kept.

"Amelia, what are you up to?" Thor asked in a hushed voice as they finally slipped down a side corridor and out of earshot of the king. "Last you spoke, Loki was intent upon ending your existence, and I do not believe his intentions for you have changed since then."

"I know, Thor," she smiled up at him brightly, "but this time I'm ready for it."

Thor saw her to the door, but stayed outside of the dungeon like hall that housed his little brother upon her request, promising to be there when she got back and to come running to her aid if she had need of him. She smiled and slipped down the broad stone steps with ease, taking her time moving along the long corridor and to the cage that housed the former prince of Asgard.

* * *

"I really don't think that muzzle suits you," her voice carried easily through the cell, making him jump, "someone with a tongue like yours should have the liberty of letting it run loose." She snapped, and the muzzle vanished, leaving only lines against his skin to tell that it had been there moments before. "That's better, isn't it?"

"How have you come to be here, human?" He demanded in a soft voice, watching her warily as she leant against the wall beside his cell, her whole posture one of only casual interest in who sat before her. "Mortals are not allowed here in Asgard."

"They are if they are invited," she corrected, "and you forget, I have magic now. I'm no mere mortal anymore." There was a faint growl growing in the back of his throat, and Amy watched him more closely for a moment before she drifted through the bars, passing through them like they were made of nothing more solid than mist. "I need you to stop for a moment."

"Stop what?" He asked, his whole body tensed and waiting to leap out of her grasp at the first hint of her trying to touch him.

"Stop trying to give me the whole _I hate humans_ shtick. It doesn't work, Loki, I know what you really think about us." She smiled faintly. "Stop being so terrified of me."

"You know I can't do that," his reply was hardly even audible in the cold cell, barely above a whisper, "you know _why_ I can't."

"I want you to try." She took a step closer, slowly, and then paused again. "Please."

"Why should I ever attempt to do something for you, when you violated the only thing that was ever truly mine?"

"Because I need to know how to control this gift of yours, and you're the only one who knows how." She tipped her head off to one side, eyes pleading as they looked into his. "I can't do this by myself, and if I try, I'll end up destroying myself and possibly a lot of other people along the way. You _know_ that, Loki, you told me yourself; magic comes with a price." Her voice softened, and he only just caught the sound of her voice. "But with a little luck, it won't come with so high a price that I can't handle it."

"Why are you so determined to do this?" He wasn't admitting he'd help her, not by a longshot, but he was curious why she was so hell-bent on making his magic work for her. "You could kill yourself, kill all those fools back on Midgard you call friends, and yet here you are, ready to be the lamb to slaughter so that you can serve orders better." He shook his head. "Go back to your realm, girl, I will not be the knife that slits your throat."

He let out a faint gasp as she slammed him into the wall, hands carefully placed on either of his shoulders, holding him back against the cold stone, face inches from his own. "I am not doing this for anyone but myself." The words were practically spat into his face. "Now stop pretending like you know me so well, and teach me how to use your magic, or so help me I will rip it from your skull one fractured little piece at a time and leave you a sniveling, miserable, shell of a man."

There was an emotion sliding slowly down Loki's spine into the pit of his stomach, and he recognized it absently as admiration. Amy, small, shy, fragile little girl that she was, was threatening _him_, and foolhardy or not, it earned her a modicum of respect. "I thought I told you not to touch me. Don't you ever listen, girl?"

Her hand shifted to hover over his throat, expression perfectly calm as she looked up into his face, the threat of what she was prepared to do perfectly clear. "Don't you?"

"Enough." He snapped, gingerly pushing her away. "I'll tell you what you want to know, but only on one condition."

"And what might that be?" She asked, eyes still calculating as they watched him carefully.

"You stay here until your training is complete, you keep your hands to yourself, and when I'm finished with you, and you go home to Midgard and refuse to tell anyone there where you learned to control your magic, you take me with you."

She quirked an eyebrow at him, a smirk in evidence as she spoke. "You want me to take you home? Really, Loki, I had no idea you felt that way about me."

He gave her a flat look. "That is not what I meant."

"Oh, don't be so sure of that." She rejoined playfully, Tony's personality in full-swing. "You might actually come to like me by the end of this, at least a little."

"I find that impossible to believe." He replied coolly, looking her over with evident disdain. "There is nothing about you I find at all attractive, save for perhaps the thought of your head on a stake, and I doubt very much that you are capable of doing anything that will change my mind on the subject."

She grinned, giving him a curt nod. "Challenge accepted. Now, let's get to work, shall we? Before you brother comes in and ruins all our fun."

Loki let out a faint sigh and resigned himself to his impending fate. He had to avoid contact until she took him back to Midgard, and then it wouldn't matter what she learned about how he thought of her. Until then, however, his opinions were his own, and he had no intention of letting them slip to anyone. "Very well, let's begin."

She brightened. "Oh yes, _let's_."

* * *

_Like I said...  
_

_And, since this is the last chapter, I would just like to say thanks to all of you who've hung around for the ride and left me reviews telling me what you thought! It always means a lot when people let me know what they think of my writing, so thank you!  
_

_This will likely not be the last Avengers fic I write, but I'll probably be taking a break from the fandom for a little while, at least.  
_

_Until then, thanks again!  
_


	13. So Shiny and New

_Yeah, so, the last chapter was supposed to be the _last_ chapter, but then you all said it was a terrible ending, and I re-read it and realized you were right, so maybe this one will be better. Don't get used to it, though!_

* * *

It had been a whole year since she'd vanished, a year of late nights pouring over monitors and wishing he knew more about magic, a year of false alarms when his scenario run-throughs thought they found something, a year of throwing himself into battles and missions without stopping to think about it first.

A year without Amy.

Tony hadn't had much hope that this "training" Thor talked about would just happen overnight, but a small part of him had been hoping that maybe, just maybe, she'd come back in six months or so. He hadn't known at the time that if he'd multiplied by two, he would have been spot on. He missed her, it was as simple as that, and whenever Jarvis spoke to him in the workshop, or he made coffee at completely absurd hours of the night, he was reminded of just how much he really did miss her.

She'd been one of them, in a weird sort of way, and now that she was gone, well… He didn't have a playmate, Steve didn't have a sketch-buddy, Clint had no one to practice archery with, and Banner was stuck doing tests in his lab alone. They all missed her, in their own way, but Tony felt worst about it, like maybe somehow her leaving was his fault, and she would still be around if his personality hadn't kicked in.

It was probably dumb, he knew, but he tended to do that whenever people he cared about ended up in trouble. And even though he assumed she was safe, because who could be unsafe in Asgard with _Thor_ of all people as their bodyguard, he wished he knew for sure. He wished he could have said goodbye.

The elevator chimed cheerily as the capsule descended, and the little blue light flashed frantically as it indicated that Steve was coming down to see him. It had been a ritual for a while now, that whenever Tony vanished down into the depths of his mechanical lair for too long, it was the good captain that came to find him.

"I don't want to hear it." Tony spoke without looking at the blond, eyes trained dutifully onto his current project, even though his hands had fallen idle quite some time ago. "I'm not your husband, I'm not your kid, and you can't make me go to bed."

A hand landed lightly on his shoulder and turned him around enough so that a pair of soft lips could descend against his forehead, and Tony froze. Steve tried a lot of tricks to get him to sleep, but smooching him had not been one of them. "Gosh, Steve," Tony managed faintly, "I knew you wanted me to get some sleep, I just had no idea you wanted me to get it with you."

"Well, what can I say? I have a thing for brunettes." And that wasn't Steve's voice, even though it was coming from Steve's mouth, and Tony had to sit there and blink dumbly up at the visage of Captain Rogers before his brain finished processing, and he jumped slightly from the realization.

"Amy…?" The question came out as a faint whisper, his eyes traveling over every inch of the mask she was wearing, looking for a hint of who was behind it.

Steve's face split into a grin, full of teeth and something Tony wasn't sure he wanted to recognize. "Hey handsome. You miss me?"

Tony would swear, to his dying day and beyond, that he did _not_ cry as he shot to his feet and pulled her into the biggest hug he could manage. And as he felt her morph from Steve's much bigger frame back into her more delicate one, he felt himself melt a little too. "You have no idea how much." He breathed against her ear, his arms now securely wrapped around her shoulders.

She hugged him back, hands digging into his back, fingers clutching tightly at his shirt, and he could feel her heartbeat hammering against his chest. "I sort of do now, actually," she whispered faintly, "and I'm so sorry I left the way I did."

"Don't be." He mumbled, because yeah, hearing her apologize was possibly the worst thing on the face of the planet. "You had your reasons, I get it, don't feel like you owe us an apology for deciding to run off to play in the clouds." And okay, that sounded more patronizing and guilty-trippy than he had intended, but she could hear his heartbeat, so maybe she'd get what he really meant instead of how he'd butchered the delivery of it.

"I still am sorry I just sort of ran out on you." She pulled away slightly, frowning. "I should have at least told you where I was going. What I would be doing."

"Thor filled us in, mostly," he pulled away completely and plopped back into his chair just to get his lying heart out of earshot of her, "but I am kinda curious why you came back."

"I wanted to say goodbye."

And _that_ was why he was sitting all the way over here, because if she could read his mind right now she would be shocked with how dark his heart could really be. "Shame to lose you, ya know, I miss having an extra set of hands to help me out down here." He picked up an extra length of wire he hadn't used yet and started to fiddle with it, just to give his hands something to do. He wanted to grab her and shake her, demand to know what the _hell_ was going through her mind that she should she could just leave them like this. That she could walk away from them when they _needed her_, when _he_ needed her.

"I know, I'll miss hearing Jarvis give you lip…" She dropped her gaze to his hands as they continued to play with the length of wire, twisting it this way and that. "Tony, I left copies of my farewells to the others on the system in my old room, could you ask Jarvis to distribute them appropriately?" She waited until she'd seen him give a minute nod before she leant forward and kissed the top of his head. "Yours is sitting on your pillow in your room."

He managed a faint chuckle at that. "What, you want me to agonize over what you might say in there all the way up to my room?"

"No, I want you to be able to remember the sound of my voice whenever you like." She smiled down at him. "I suspect you won't be hearing it for quite some time."

"Why are you leaving?" The question left his lips unbidden almost before she'd even stopped speaking, the look on her face saying clearly that she'd just been waiting for him to ask.

"Well, according to a certain green-eyed monster we both know, it's because I'm a selfish human." She smiled ruefully. "I'm inclined to agree with him." She snapped, making a chair appear out of thin air in front of him, and perched on it carefully. "But if we're being honest, it's because I'm tired of being used." Her expression fell, her eyes trained onto her hands, her fingers interlaced. "I was a contingency plan for long, I guess what I really wanted was just to get away from it all… And now I can."

"You don't have to play house with a monster from another dimension just to get out of being Fury's toy doll. You could stay, Amy, we'd all protect you in a heartbeat, you have to know that by now."

"Of course I know." She shook her head. "But none of you will be able to beat him at his own game. It's safer this way, really, no one will be able to use me now- Fury or anyone else." Her smile was short-lived before her expression grew pensive again. "It's better this way."

"How is it better to run away from the only kind of family you have?" He spoke in a rush, needing to get the thoughts out of his head before he simply exploded from all the questions he wanted to ask. "How can you run away from what you have here, how can you just-" he stopped, grabbing her hand and placing it over his heart, looking her in the eyes.

The bright blue orbs grew wide in the artificial light of his workbench, her expression surprise mixed with a little fear over what she might read in him. Slowly, though, her face went slack, tears brimming in her eyes as she understood.

"_How_?" He breathed faintly. "Just tell me that, and I can let you walk out of our lives for good. Just help me understand."

She sighed softly, leaning forward to kiss his forehead, his mind suddenly flooding with images that hadn't been there before. Little Amy, only a handful of years old, watching her mother tear herself apart because she'd reached her limit for voices she could have in her head; Amy of sixteen, hiding in her room from the boys in her class because it was hard not to brush past people in the halls and _did all boys think that way?!_; Amy reading Clint for the first time, her eyes rolling back into her head with the effort and Clint looking like he was about to pass out as well; Amy as she read a book instead of a person, looking like any other girl until Fury opened the door to her room and walked inside; Amy reading them, gleaning their emotions and personalities; Amy moving through prison bars like they were nothing; Amy with a god pressing her to a wall and hissing things in her ear that Tony _did not_ need to hear-

He gasped, nearly collapsing onto the floor when she finally pulled away. "That's some new trick you learned." He managed between labored breaths, glancing up at her with curious eyes. "Loki really talk to you like that, or do you just have a weird imagination?"

"You planning to tackle him again if I say yes?" She asked offhandedly, a grin threatening to spill onto her lips. Tony merely smirked, and she smiled in return. "It was only once, he learned his lesson very quickly." Her eyes flashed, and Tony decided it would be better not to ask.

"He have anything to do with your sudden urge to spread your wings?" He had to ask. He wasn't naïve enough to think that something hadn't happened over the course of an entire year where they'd been working together. And even if nothing of the sort had occurred, Loki was still a slippery bastard and Tony wouldn't put it past him to try something like that just to get out of Asgard.

"Not really," she shrugged, "other than giving me the perfect escape." She smiled and shifted seamlessly into a perfect image of Pepper before she winked and changed back. "Any other questions? The hack I used on the security system will be shorted out soon once the system figures out something is wrong and reboots."

Tony had never quite been as proud as he was at that moment. He'd taught her how to do that. "Just one more," his tone grew serious once more as he looked her in the eye, "will I ever see you again."

Her smile was soft. "Maybe in your dreams, Mr. Stark," she smiled, "and maybe if you decide the city can't be saved without me." She stood and sighed softly. "But until then, no. I hear mars is nice this time of year… I thought I might go check it out."

"If you see any little green men be sure to send me pictures, I have a running bet with Rhodey that they do, in fact, exist." He grinned. "Take care of yourself, Kiddo."

She hugged him again before pulling away and starting to fade around the edges, pulling a vanishing act he was all too familiar with. "You too, old man."

* * *

The little disc on his pillow was unfairly bright as it caught the light from above and sent it back in rings of rainbow colors. Tony glared at it, as though it had no right to be so chipper looking when the circumstances around its arrival were so sad, but knew being angry at inanimate objects was thoroughly juvenile.

He kept glaring all the same.

A knock sounded on the door behind him and he turned to look over his shoulder, unsurprised to see Steve standing there with an eyebrow raised. "Tony? You alright?"

"Yeah, why?" He shot back automatically.

"Pepper's been trying to call you, said something about an board of director's meeting today…?"

Tony swore under his breath and bolted out of the room, shouting directions at Jarvis to get his suit up on the balcony for him so he could get to the office as fast as possible. He shoved both his cup of coffee and the disk in its plain case into Steve's hands as he passed, and the Captain accepted them without argument, a chuckle on his lips.

He watched Tony dart around a corner at the end of the hall before he put the coffee back onto the table beside the bed, setting the disk next to it.

"Captain," Jarvis spoke softly from above him, "there is a message waiting for you on the monitor in your room."

Steve, assuming it would be from Fury about a new mission, headed out the door and back towards his room, closing the door behind him and asking Jarvis to play it.

His heart nearly hammered straight out of his chest when he saw bright blue eyes and dirty blond hair. "Hello, Captain." She smiled brightly. "I'm sorry this is so sudden, but I thought you deserved a proper goodbye."

Steve wasn't sure this qualified as a _proper _goodbye…

But then again, he wasn't about to complain about seeing her one last time.

* * *

_There. Is that better? Because even if it isn't, I'm not re-writing it again. XD  
_

_Thank you all for following and reading and reviewing, it means a lot to me!_


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